It's the same to me
by Amethyst trickster
Summary: When the turtles visit a planet where engineers are highly revered, aliens kidnap Donnie and the team has to get him back. For those disappointed Donnie didn't get an episode in the space ark.
1. Chapter 1

A large white ship docked on the planet. Its hatch opened, and as soon as it was wide enough Mikey ran out of it.

"Woo hoo! Vacation day!"

"This isn't a vacation Mikey," Leonardo said. "We need to stay vigilant."

"Yes Leonardo's right, in two days the ion storm will break and we will have just enough time to make it through before the ion clouds close. The next gap in the storm is two weeks from now, so it is imperative that you all return here by then. If we miss the opening we might never make up the lost time." Fugitiod said. "That said, we don't actually have anything we specifically need to do today, so I don't see why we can't take in the sights."

"Yeah, the sights" Raph said, looking around at the dust-colored city carved out of sandstone.

"Yes, well, the capital has had a bit of trouble regaining its lost splendor ever since the Kraang attack 200 years ago." Fugitiod said.

"This planet survived an attack?" Donatello asked.

"Yes, but not without extreme damage that they're still afflicted with today."

"What's that Prof.?" April asked, looking up at all the rails that weaved their way through the sky between buildings.

"The capital is a thriving bureaucratic and trade city. so they often feel the need to send lots of messages and items back and forth between them and quick. Those carts you see shooting from building to building are the mail carriers."

Suddenly they heard a scream.

Of course, since it was the turtles habit to run _towards_ screams not away from them, they dashed into the city's main square to see what the problem was.

As soon as they got close a large werewolf charged them.

The wolf man had slitted, blue eyes. He had waist-length, straight, brown hair worn in a straightforward style. His fur was black. He had a graceful build. His tail was bushy and carried straight. And he wore a complicated outfit that looked meant for a rave.

They fell back into defensive positions, ready to counter any blow he dealt them.

He ran past them screaming. Several other screaming werewolves followed suit.

"OK, so the werewolves aren't the problem." Leo noted.

"Those must be the planet's natives" Donnie added.

"But what could scare away a bunch of horror movie rejects?" Raph asked.

"Ooh, A scarier horror monster reject, maybe it's a vampire, No! Zombie! No, Frankenstein!"

Mikey rattled.

"We won't know till we look." April said, walking in front of them.

Donnie raised his Bo a bit higher, He wouldn't say anything, because he knew she'd be annoyed, but he was worried about her being in front, she was right in the path of whatever was ahead of them and would be taking the full brunt of the attack.

And humans didn't have mutant resilience.

The street they walked on was deserted, Fliers in an alien language scattered on the ground, scattered baggage littered the ground, abandoned. Cooking smells permeated the air, it seemed to be coming from an overturned fryer. But other than a pile of burning wreckage, there was nothing dangerous they could see.

Suddenly they heard a large metallic crunch above them. Something was perched on the mail rails.

It looked like a color-me-in outline of one of the natives, Only instead of coloring it in the artist had somehow gotten hold of a giant squid and squished it into the outline until it was bursting at the seams.

It lurched itself off the rails, they scattered out of its way, The road tiles cracked beneath its weight when it landed. Donnie gulped, He didn't want to know what it would feel like to have that thing land on you.

It lunged at Raph, knocking him back so hard they both flew back and started rolling across the street.

The team charged after them. Donnie started to follow, then slowed as he passed by the smoking wreckage. It looked like a car without wheels had swerved out-of-the-way of something

Could someone be stuck in the car?

He took a glance inside, the doors were open and no one was in it.

As he pulled away from the vehicle he noticed a slime trail in front of the car. Whatever had been in the way of the car had been... Melting?

He followed the trail with his eyes, it looked like something had landed in front of the car, leaving a large splatter behind like a popped water balloon, or more accurately, a balloon filled with sap, and then it... Slid into an alley?

He glanced back at the mêlée behind him, His team seemed to be handling things fine without him, they'd gotten Raph away from it and had it surrounded.

He turned his attention back to the slime, they wouldn't miss him for a few minutes Right?

He followed the slime trail into the alley.

It was dustier, and sandier, and It was lined with sandstone tiles instead of concrete, other then that it seemed like a typical New York alley. Trash here and there, a pile of blankets on the floor like a homeless person had slept there, the smell of animal urine somewhere on a far wall. Typical New York.

The alley took a sharp turn, he rounded it to find another pair of wolves trying to pull planks out of large fence.

"Hurry, Hurry." The smaller one urged, female from her voice, she had a red coat and a slender coat that made her look more like a fox then a wolf, her dress made her look like Royalty.

"I'm trying." The other said, A gruff male voice, and a grey coat. Both coats were grey, his business suit and his fur, he was broad-shouldered and looked much older than the other one.

"Hey.., are you guys ok?" Donnie asked tentatively.

They started and jerked to look back at him.

"Look out a monster!" The red one screamed.

Donnie flinched and held up his palms. "No, no, I'm a friendly monster."

"No! I'm trying to _warn_ you! look out! a monster!" She screamed.

He heard a sound that sent a shiver up his back. It was a revolting sound, like a sludgy pop.

Donnie craned his neck back as far as it would go, an uncomfortable position that made him feel like he was trying to watch a theater screen from a seat placed 2-inches in front of the screen.

Going by the large ball of limbs and slime above him, it was a horror movie.

A large ball of green hairy sludge hung from the alley wall, it was snot colored and probably had some distinguishing features, but Donnie could see any under all the goo.

A drop dangled off the creature like an over-sized loogey and dribbled onto his cheek.

He gripped his Bo with white knuckles. There wasn't anywhere to dodge.

With a sudden burst of energy the Monster flung itself off the wall toward the fence. The grey wolf yelled and pulled his arms up to protect his face.

Realizing the Beast had picked a different target, Donnie flung himself off the ground at it.

His Bo collided with a smack, knocking it off its flight path away from the wolves. But while Donnie usually rolled past his opponent breezily and fell back into a fight position, this time his Bo got stuck to the beasts sticky slime coat and he came to a stop, smacking chest first into his own Bo.

He let out a rush of air and gripped the Bo tighter. The beast rattled this way and that, trying to throw him off.

He gritted his teeth and pushed a button on his Bo.

An electric shock ripped through the beast, causing it to convulse and give one more mighty buck that flung him away from it.

He hit the ground and tried to roll back onto his feet and lunge away, but the goo on the end of his Bo stuck it to the floor, he nearly jerked out of his shell when he tried to run with it.

The beast flung another globule of slime at him. He jumped out of its way only to step into another slime trail, sticking to his feet.

He threw his arms out trying to keep his balance, waving them to and thro, The beast lobbed another ball of slime at his head and he had to bend forward to dodge it, this threw him completely off-balance and he fell face first in the slime trail.

He struggled to escape, from the foul stench is much as the stickiness, but it held firm.

He opened his eye gingerly, terrified that the disgusting substance could wind up getting stuck to his eyeball, and saw the horrifying beast dragging itself by its knuckles toward him.

He tried to open his mouth to scream, his beak held shut by the muffling ooze.

Casey's exploding pucks lodged themselves into the monster and blew it to pieces. The result of which was flying globules that flew in the sky rained out and plasma.

Donatello shut his eyes as his body was beaten by the droves of ooze that hailed on him.

Casey snickered, "man Donnie, you got wasted by a slug, bet you're glad April's not looking. Hey April! Look at Don."

The other three turtles came up to look at him, they all burst out laughing.

The smaller wolf ran up to Casey and shoved him over. "How dare you. He saved my father's life and almost died for that, and you laugh."

"Oh, we are not laughing because of that."

"Yeah, were just laughing because he almost got wasted by Giant slug."

Her ears pulled back and she snarled, for a moment they almost thought she would attack one of them. But then the other wolf appeared at her side, flanked by the bots. One of them retracted its arm and extended a hose.

It blew smoke over the ooze covering Donnie, turning it brittle. Don pushed against it, managing to pull himself out of the shattering slime.

Thanks Mr. um..."

"Vatu." he said, "and this is my daughter Vixen."

"It's nice to meet you stranger." Vixen said, she was very pretty, with a sleek red coat that made her look more like a Fox than a werewolf.

"Donatello." Donnie said.

"What brings you here, Donatello?"

"My friends and I are waiting for the storm to pass so we can leave, we're just killing time until then. What are those creatures?"

"Those were unfortunate victims of the glowing green substance left behind by the Kraang invasion 200 years ago."

"You guys have mutagen pools on this planet?" Raph asked, checking his feet like he expecting to see glowing grime stuck to the bottom of it.

"You seem to know a lot about this." Vixen noted.

"The Kraang are attempting to attack my planet too, I'd like to learn as much about them as I can." Donnie explained.

"I like to know about that too.", Leonardo said, "I'd be willing to take any edge I can."

They might be concerned with Triceratrons now. But they knew that once this was over they'd be right back fighting Kraang.

"Do any of you have a scientific background?"

Donnie raised his hand."Just me sir"

"If you'd like it, Donatello, I would be willing to take you out to the desert to see some of the things they left behind. the rest of you I would recommend go to the museum." He pointed across town." That tall building you can see there."

"All right, team, seems we found what we're going to be doing during these next two days.", Leonardo said, clapping his hands together.

Raph pointed a finger at Don. "Make absolutely sure you don't lose track of time again. We all know how you can get when you find some new scientific whatever to study."

Donatello bristled, "my love of science might make me a bit absent-minded at times, but there's not anything that could make me forget the earth is in danger."

They split up, usually separating on an alien planet would make Donatello feel anxious.

But now he felt slightly relieved to be away from them.

He followed the two aliens into their flying shuttle and looked out the window as it flew across the landscape.

A fish jumped out of the sand and fell back in, Donnie pressed his palms against the glass to get a better look.

" Sir? Is it just me? Or does all that sand look like it's moving."

"That is the sand sea, a sea of liquid sand. I believe what you're looking at is the waves."

Donatello felt a bit sick looking at it. As an aquatic creature he could hold his breath for a very long time, but he had absolutely no interest in seeing if he could swim through that viscous liquid. And he didn't even want to think what drowning in it would feel like.

He tried to peek ahead to see where they were going, and sat up straight as he noticed they seemed to be going to some kind of pink island.

They stepped out of the shuttle pod onto it and he poked it with his Bo."I've seen this pink fleshy dirt before. This island has been Terra formed to resemble part of dimension X."

"Yes, you will see these small pink spots littered throughout the planet. Usually surrounding one of those.", he pointed at a Kraang ship that looked like it crashed into the island so long ago the tips were starting to rust.

"Our scientists have been trying to figure out how to gain entrance for close to 200 years, to this day our best and brightest- who are admittedly few, as the Kraang kidnapped all of our scientists and destroyed our libraries -have been-"

The old wolf nearly jumped out of his skin as the door slid open. The two wheeled around, boggling at Donnie in shock.

He smiled sheepishly, his finger still on the control panel. "I might not have had 200 years, but the Earth's science community is still thriving, and I have been very motivated to learn Kraang hypertext language."

He strode into the ship, the other two glanced at each other and then followed him.

Donatello raised his Bo and stayed alert as he walked through the hall to the center of the ship.

He didn't trust the Kraang to not leave any unwanted surprises in their wake.

The long hallway led to a large room filled with containment pods.

Donatello examined the creatures inside."What are these?"

"It looks like these are mutants. Prisoners of war that were fused with one of our indigenous species." Vatu started

" This one's fused with a Root Rot Wight, the plants that binds its prey with a smile, then pops them into it's mouth. Mutant root rots are a bane on us." Vixen continued.

"Have been for 200 years. It's a very long-lived plant. Even more dangerous because they live near lagoons, that's the home of Hunter bugs." Vatu cut in.

"Anyone who falls into the lagoon becomes mutated with Hunter bug DNA. The mutant Hunter bugs and the mutant root rot often work together." Vixen finished.

Donatello went over to a broken plate and read the writing on it. "Multi-DNA experiment. Any idea what this is?"

"What scientists we had were able to create a retro mutagen for the mutants that had been infused with one type DNA.

Most green pools just split their DNA with whatever last touched the pool."

"That's how the mutagen from Earth seems to work too, switching at the specimens DNA with whatever last touched it."

"The multi-DNA experiments were the Krang trying to see what would happen if it infused many different types of DNA into one subject. It often turns the victim into these liquid creatures. Our retro mutagen didn't seem to work on them."

"Shoot! I was worried about that, I think that's what happened to Timothy, a victim of the ooze back on earth. Can I see your recipe for making retro mutagen, I want to see how much differs from mine."

"Of course, there is a copy of it back the museum on display."

"Let me download the data from these computers and then we can-look out!"

He shoved Vixen out of the way of something that left out of the shadows. It scratched it's long claws across Donnie's space suit, ripping it open, then landed on the balls of its feet and spun gracefully into a crouch.

It looks like a werewolf fused with two other werewolves. It had eight arms and three faces two of them placed horizontally on its skull.

Its eyes had melted into its face. "How can it tell where we are?" Donatello asked.

"Psychic sense."

"All right, I've got this." Donatello said, dropping into crouch.

It selected Vixen as it's victim again, she screamed. Donatello pole vaulted over the creature, and as he flew over it he pulled the band off his head, and stuck it on the beast.

And it immediately went limp, and dropped as if dead.

"What was that?"

"That was a psychic neutralizer band. Fugitiod said that the citizens of this planet had psychic powers. So he gave each one of us one of these to wear before we left the ship. As I expected, wearing it forced the creature to rely on something other then it's psychic ability, which it's been relying on for hundreds of years, old fella. cut off from that, it became lethargic.

"Your species is susceptible to psychic attacks, then?" Vatu asked, looking highly interested in this fact.

"I don't know, I've only ever fought one psychic."

"Let's return to the museum."

The ride back to the museum was uneventful, Though the torn elastic was unsalvageable and Donnie had to remove his space suit.

Donnie tipped his head back as far as it would go, trying to see as much of the museum as possible while walking up the steps. The building didn't seem like much, It almost seemed like a really big termite mound. Not the sort of place he would have guessed to hold a city's history. He turned around and around once inside. The first floor of the building seemed dedicated to paintings and sculptures. It was kind of hard not to stop and look. The second floor held a surprise.

"Is that a hover scooter?" Donnie asked. Pointing to a motorcycle shaped object floating above a display platform.

"Yes, This was one of the designs that survived the Krang's purge, but since it's still time-consuming to make and requires one of our scarce engineers most of the population travels by train. You mostly only see hover cars and bikes in the islands where the nation's wealthy live.

"Wow, I'm sure Raph would have been asking me to make him one if we'd gone together." Donnie said.

Then his eyes got carried over to something else. A white broad-shouldered bot that seemed to have large gun barrels for arms.

"That's one of those bots you had before, what are they?

"That's a sentry bot, another one of our surviving designs, again, you only see them in the homes of the wealthy. and occasionally in public buildings like this one."

"What do they shoot?"

"White globule of the slobworm, you fought a mutant slobworm earlier, I imagine that's given you a first hand account of their stopping power."

Donnie repressed the urge to retch, gulping instead.

"Yes." His nausea disappeared as a thought came to him. "I think I saw something just like that on an episode of space heroes." He laughed, " I bet Leo's going to ask me to build him one, he's been asking me to build him a Space heroes gadget since we were kids."

He was immediately distracted by something on a display case across the room. He ran over and pressed his hands against the glass.

"Is that what I think it is?"

"That's battle Armour made for our small eastern cousins, they aren't very big, but they neither are the Krang, they did play an important part in the war-"

"you made Armour for cats!" "

"Cats?"

"They're a species of animal back on earth, Mikey has one as a pet, if he was here right now he'd ask me to make a coat for ice cream kitty. I've got to show him this- Oh, he probably already spent an hour gushing over this while I was on the Krang-ship."

He looked back at Vatu sadly, "Now I'm kinda starting to wish, I'd gone with them."

"Why? Sounds to me like all that would have gotten you is an increased workload."

"Maybe, but seeing all this stuff together would have been fun."

Probably one of the best days they'd had since coming on this trip, Now he was regretting getting so angry at them for laughing at him earlier. Vatu didn't look impressed,

"The more I hear of these kids the less I like them."

"You haven't been seeing them at their best."Donnie flippantly. "Lets go look at that formula."

Finally, he made it to the retro mutagen formula.

"This is a fascinating formula. Some parts are similar to my formula, but other parts are different. I suppose that's to be expected. Each planet has different materials to work with after all, I'd like to make a batch of this new mutagen and test it to see how different it is from mine. Then maybe combine methods from the two different formulas and try to make an improved formula."

"That could be this scientific discovery of the century." the old wolf exclaimed." You must be an esteemed scientists where you're from."

"Well, I don't know about esteemed. Unique, definitely."

"Do you work for your planet's government?"

"No, I work for my team. That bunch you saw back at the fight scene."

"that pack of unappreciative children? surely you can do better."

Donatello gave a little laugh," maybe, I wouldn't want to. That was my family you saw back there."

"Too bad. Now we'll have to do this the hard way."

Vatu held up a can, gas seeped from it. Donatello inhaled it in, his eyes started to droop and he slouched over. Vatu caught him as he fell, and threw him over shoulder."Things are going to get a lot better for you." he muttered.

"Put the turtle down and no one gets hurt." a low seething voice warned. Vatu's ears perked up. He glanced around the room and saw a pair of white eyes glaring at him through the shadows. He cursed under his breath, he'd forgotten about the other turtles being at the museum."Your part in this ended a long time ago." Vatu said."Guards dispatch." He called, bringing in two sentry bots from the other room, Then turned to run.

"Wrong answer." Mikey warned, sweeping from the shadows and slashing through the guard with his kusarigama. Vatu grunted in annoyance, and ducked out of the way as a sentry pulled out a gun, shooting a white blob at its opponent's feet. Mickey stepped in it and jerked to a stop as the white blob fused his feet to the floor.

Mikey growled, and lasso'd his kusarigama around the other guard, giving it a yank that took the Sentry bot's head off. Mikey crouched on all fours and pulled all his weight against the trapped limb.

The tile hissed then popped as Mikey pulled it out of the floor. He remembered the sticky toys that sometimes washed up in the sewers. _Dirt+ sticky toy = not sticky_. He remembered, and walking over to a pot of sand-water, yanked the alien plant from it and submersed his foot in it. Pulling his foot slowly out of the pot, the sticky blob rubbed against the granules, beginning the tedious process of slipping off his foot. When he removed his foot from the pot an age later (or maybe it was thirty seconds, he didn't have a watch.)He raced out the door like a demon. He shot straight up the stairs to the second floor and then threw open a window to look outside.

He spotted Vatu forcing Donnie into a car and shutting the door. Snarling he vaulted up the stairs three and a time.

Raph and Leo were coming down the stairs and started to talk when they spotted him.

"There you are, we've been looking all ov-erk" Mikey threw his hands out and placed them on either side of his siblings shoving them apart and out of his way as he barreled past. He ignored their cries of indignation and threw open the windows, he leaped out and caught one of the mail carts shuttling past. he gripped it, ignoring the somersault in his stomach as it carried him upward at alarming speeds and darted his eyes back and forth across the horizon.

Spotting his quarry he jumped off his cart onto another, which twisted around to pass by the departing train shooting towards the sand-waters. He swung his Sickle towards the train and hooked it, it jerked him off the cart and sent him dangling in the wind like a kite. He grabbed the chain and dragged his way up it until he reached the top of the train and could deploy his other sickle. Clawing his way across the top of the train, he hung on, trying to see through the wind-stung tears in his eyes to look around himself. The train gained speed, approaching the shuttle traveling beside the tracks.

Mikey waited until he was side by side it before leaping off the train and landing on the top of the shuttle. Banging so hard into it the driver swerved, Mikey pierced the hull of the shuttle with his sickle to keep from falling off. He stabbed his way to the front then started hitting the front glass until it shattered.

"What the crud are you doing?" Vatu screamed in disbelief. " Get off the shuttle you maniac!"

"Not until you give back my brother!" Mikey shot back. Vatu snarled and pulled up, tilting the shuttle to an untenable 90 degrees and starting to tip backward. Mikey realized what he was doing and scrabbled for a better hold."nononoonono!", He babbled as his sickle lost it's grip and he fell off, careening toward the sands.

He lassoed the tracks before hitting the sands, but nearly let go when he felt the shock of the hit. He flailed about in the sands trying to get out. And managed to get a gasp of breath in before he was dragged under. His body was tugged upward by his chain. He held on with a death grip choking and sputtering as he was pulled out. His brothers reeled him in and pulled his body onto the tracks.

"Man, Mikey, the only time I've ever seen you move that fast was that one time you mixed sugar and Redbull." Raph noted.

"What was that all about?" Leo asked.

"They-took Donnie." Mikey choked out.

This fic was inspired by a comment on this tmnt amv-

watchv=Pz3aPfn_wAM&index=30&list=PL6ac0rPnUuOG3uLc_ylTSJHnpTTAkOyd-

TARDISgirl21 said there should be an episode mirroring a batman beyond episode where an underappreciated Dana was kidnapped by a sympathetic villain.

That was the first chapter, I know Mikey seemed a little intense. He's not the easiest turtle to write for me, but I figure a kidnapping is an intense situation. Especially considering the victim. I'll make him less intense in the rest of the fic.

I forgot abut his space weapons while writing this chapter, which is why he uses his nun chucks... Whoops.

Next update on saturday.


	2. Chapter 2

Strong sunlight filtered into the room. A very pleasant sensation for a turtle to wake up to.

Donnie stretched out, pulling his arms across silk-like bed sheets and letting out a small mmm of enjoyment. He heard the door open and sat up.

Vatu wheeled in a trolley covered in alien fruits and confectionery. If Donnie was on his game he'd say that he preferred replicater-made earth food because he didn't know if this alien food was edible by his species, but the sunlight high he was on made him throw caution to the wind and accept the food.

"I'm sorry about that, " Donnie apologized, "Did I faint in the heat? I should have stopped by the ship to ask fugitiod for a spare suit so that wouldn't happen."

"No trouble at all, have something to eat."

The first thing he tried was a pink berry covered in sweet sauce. He closed his eyes in enjoyment and wondered how they got berries in a desert. Probably either greenhouse grown or imported.

"Can my friends come in and eat with me?" Donnie asked.

He felt a little bad about asking, just Mikey could eat the man out of house and home, but he wanted to share this with April.

"I'm afraid they won't be able to join us this evening. "

Donnie froze with a berry half way to his mouth, "What's that?

"Your friends won't be joining us this evening, or any evening, You were sicker then you think. They had to leave before the ion storm overtook them and couldn't take you with them, we have been treating you for three days.

"I was passed out for _three days_?" Donnie screamed."NONONONO!" He bit his nails and turned about in circles, the adrenaline in his veins telling him to run even though he didn't have anywhere to run to." WHY DIDN'T THEY TAKE ME WITH THEM!?", He exclaimed in disbelief, "I could have recovered on the ship!"

"It doesn't matter, you're here now, so we must make the best of it, all of your needs will be-" He was interrupted by Donnie jumping onto the trolley and -grabbing the front of Vatu's shirt- pressed right up against his face."Vatu! I need you to help me find a way to get through the Ion storm.""That is incredibly dangerous, I can't allow you to-""This is bigger than me, it's about a whole planet, earth is-"

"Earth!" Vatu said with incredulity. "Why go to such lengths to save a planet of people who fear you?"

Thrown by the question, Donnie paused in confusion.

"Earth is my home. The only one I''ve ever know, its culture's will always shape me, Japan and America. My favorite food is there, my friends' families." His eyes begged the older male to understand. "My father-" he pleaded, voice beginning to break.

"If your Entourage really can't get along without you then we'll send a shuttle to help your father relocate." Vatu said, almost flippantly.

"That's very kind.", Donnie said, and it did help him feel better." But I need to go."

"I can't help you."

"Then I'll help myself." Donnie threw open the window and leaped out of it, ignoring the surprised cry from inside. He crossed the flagpole on the way down, spinning around it and using its momentum to propel him to the ground safely. He ran across the road to a motorcycle like vehicle and hopped on it.

"Sorry, interplanetary emergency."

Ignoring the cries of "thief," he floored it, leaving dust in his wake as he sped across the land. He accelerated to top speed, only slowing when he came to the coast. Exhaling in frustration, he turned his bike around and sped alongside it. He hugged the ocean until the path began to rise, spiraling around a large peak. He ascended it thinking that he would be able to get a better view of his surroundings up top. The road became rougher and rougher as he ascended, until his teeth were chattering in his head from all of the rocks he crossed over. Getting aggravated, he turned the bike off and jumped off. Running up the peak on foot. He ran uphill full tilt, trying to not let the rocks get to him too much.

He sucked in a breath upon reaching the top."Noooo-" He breathed as he turned around and around, trying to take the whole view at once.

The shifting sand waves completely surrounded the island. The sound of the waves washed over him until it hit a roaring pitch.

He was stranded.

April threw open her shell cell and dialed again. Honeycutt came up online."Anything?" She asked."I'm afraid not, Ms. O'Neill."the Prof. Said. She closed the phone."see anything?" She asked Casey.

"Just more sand." He answered.

"This is bad, this is really bad.""Don't worry about it Red, we've been in worse spots before."

"But what if we can't find him? We're going to have to go on without him. And come back in a month."

"No use worrying about it until it happens. We still have time.", Casey said breezily. An explosion went off in the distance.

"What was that?" April asked.

"I don't know, let's go check it out." Casey said, turning the craft to face the sound.

"We were supposed to be looking for Donnie." April reprimanded.

"Raph is always complaining about turtle luck. He claims that if an explosion goes off anywhere in New York it'll happen by a turtle. So let's go see if it's a family trait."

Sgt. Stripes glowered as the attack raged on."those creeps are just getting bolder and bolder by the day." he snarled, "hold the line."

The workers ran to the newly arrived crates, attempting to unload them before the fight got heavy. As they lifted one up the side came loose and green alien boy fell out of it.

"And who are you supposed to be?"

Donnie rolled to his feet."I'm sorry about stealing away in your crate, but I'm trying to get the mainland and no one will help me."

"You picked a bad time to get stuck on this rig boy, we're settling in for a battle."

"I don't have time to sit around," Donnie pleaded."Please, I know engineering knowledge is really valuable on this planet. I'll write you a how-to pamphlet on anything you want to know if you can get me to the mainland."

"You're an engineer? Shoot, fix my oil rig and I'll get you anywhere you want."

Donnie saluted."consider it done, sir."

_/ O

"Hey, I think I see Donnie."

" What? Where?"

"Over there, Red" Casey said.

*Crash* They screamed as their hovercraft jerked under them and took a nose dive.

They hadn't even seen the shots, but the smoldering hole in the back of their craft was all the evidence they needed. They braced themselves for impact and April held onto Casey's waist as their craft skirted across the deck of a sand-sea ship and came to a stop hitting the mast.

They wasted no time leaping off and dispatching the Pirates that attacked them.

"How are we going to signal him?"

"It looks like he's tearing off someplace really fast. Maybe he's trying to get onto a shuttle to escape?"

"We have to stop him. We will never catch him if he runs off."

"Easy enough, I'll just use this blaster thing to knock out that bridge."

"Casey, wait-"

Donnie wove through the shots, normally being under fire would get his heart beat, but right now it was steady as a clock. "Just get to the rig Donnie." He thought to himself, "Just focus on this one thing and take it from there."

He neared the bridge and nearly reached when a blast from a ship knocked out the bridge, splintering into 1 million pieces.

All of the thoughts racing through his brain stopped, leaving behind a Holocaust of silence.

Gone. All gone. The fate of a whole planet altered with one blast from a gun.

While his mind remained blank, his body moved of its own accord.

Backing up a few spaces, he'd jerked forward into a run, moving full pelt towards the edge he leapt off and stretched his arms wide, fingertips outstretched.

He flew down, down, down, until he reached the dangling bridge and grabbed onto it, slamming into the metal hull of the fort, he moved, dragging his way up up the frayed ropes.~~~

"Huh ... I thought I would stop him for sure."

"I'm not sure this is helping, he looks very determined to get where he's going. I think we should help not hinder-"

"yeah, yeah, I gotcha."

Donnie looked around, trying to find a long plank or something that he could use to get across to the oil rig.

He heard a blast go off and looked up to see a large shadow descending on him.

He let out a shriek of terror, ran around in a circle trying to spot somewhere that he could run, then scrambled out of the way.

A small smoldering pirate ship fell out of the sky, scraped along the fort, and slid into place between the fort in the oil rig forming a bridge.

Donnie boggled in confusion.

"Casey!"

"What? I'm helping."

Donnie picked up and abandoned tool chest, and got to work. Swiftly sealing all of the cracks, and screwing loosened nuts tight until his fingers were slick black with oil.

He climbed back down the rig to meet the foreman.

"Now we can go pick him up!" April said cheerfully as Casey hopped out of the gunners seat.

"Yeah, Hey! Look! A kitty. Hey little kitty, are you here to help keep away all those nasty space rats?"

"Kitty?" April muttered, racking her memory, her eye's widened and she spun on her heel. "Casey look out!"

"What's the matter Red? It's just a cute little-"

Casey made the mistake of picking the alien up to skritch it's head, The cat seized its opportunity and clung to his face scratching madly.

"AHH! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!"

Donnie stood in front of the Sargent, panting and dripping with black oil, "Ok chief, I made good on my part of the bargain."

"You did good kid, I think- Ambassiter Vatu?"

"Ah, there you are."

Donnie spun around in surprise.

"I thank you for looking after my ward, Sargent, he shouldn't have gotten this far at all, but I suppose it's my fault for thinking that he couldn't get off the island. I'm going to take him to a more secure estate."

"You can't do that." Donny snapped, he turned to face the Sargent, "You promised you would take me to the mainland if I helped you. Don't go back on your word now."

"I'm sorry, kid. If it was anyone else I'd chew his face off after all you've done for us. But this is so far above my pay grade, that it would be like pitting a spotted saw-maggot against a boot."

Seeing the Sargent wasn't going to be any help Donnie pitted his ire against the Wolf behind him.

"You can't do this, I'm not your ward! And I won't-"

The two Sentry bots that flanked each side of the ambassador shot out many cables that wrapped around Donnie and bound his arms to his side.

They lifted him off his feet and dragged him into the shuttle.

"You can't do this. You don't have the right. I'm gonna- April?"

He glanced out the window to see April and Casey run into the fort.

"April? Wait.. Stop the car. Stop the- "

Vatu lowered a window between them, cutting Donnie off.

Vatu opened the car door. Donnie slide out of the slackening coils and trudged out of the vehicle.

"I must say I'm disappointed." Vatu said. "I expected a mind like yours to be better able to handle a change in fortune."

"You..." Donnie said quietly, clenching his fists until the blood bleached out of them.

He whirled on the old wolf and pointed at him accusingly. " You took everything from me. My team didn't leave me here. They're still looking for me."

"What are you saying? They-"

" Don't lie to me! I saw them. They were looking for me. Do you realize what you've done? Your selfishness might have decided the fate of a whole planet."

He looked into the old wolf's eyes unflinchingly, daring him to attempt another lie. " Has the Ion storm parted yet?" He demanded.

Vatu pinched his lips together. "Has it?" Donnie demanded.

The old wolf sighed. "I had hoped that it wouldn't come to this." He opened his mouth. His lower jaw parted into two parts.

He clamped his three jaws down onto Donnie's head and poured out all of the psychic energy he could muster. The turtle's body convulsed, then went limp.

"Ooh, I feel a little dizzy. " Donnie mumbled as Vatu let him go.

"It must be the heat. Why don't you tell me about your new project as we head back home."

"Sure. I think I can figure out a way to improve retromutagen. I don't know why it's taken me so many years of living here to get around to it."

Leo careened his way through the sand ocean on his harbor scooter.

This was getting exhausting.

He slowed to a stop and opened up the shell cell.

"Find anything?"

"Nothing," Ralph answered. "And I've checked three islands already, no sign of him yet"

Leo shut the cell and reopened it, dialing again.

"I'm afraid we haven't had any luck finding out where he might've gone." The fugitoid answered. "but I'm still going through the official channels."

"I want to*cough**cough*help too." Mikey said.

"You did your best Mikey, stay with the Fugitiod and recover." Leo ordered gently before redialing the cell.

His first call kept ringing for a moment and he was starting to think it might not answer when April opened the line.

"Not now, Leo. We are talking to someone who we think saw Don."

"What! Hold the phone up so I can listen."

"Yeah, he was here. He fell out of the crates for some reason, said he was trying to make it the mainland. Seemed really desperate."

"And then?" Casey grilled.

The Ambassador came by collected him. Felt bad for the kid, he seemed really distressed about it."

"Do you know where they went?" April asked.

"Yeah, they took a high-speed shuttle to East Island."

"In that case, did you catch that Leo?"

"Yeah, I think I'm right by there. Call Ralph, tell him where to go."

He shut his cell, then started the Ignition.

-=============I==

He drove the bike onto the shore and jumped off it, landing ankle deep in the sand-water.

He ignored the feeling of the granules rubbing between his toes as he dragged his feet through the viscous liquid that was trying to sand his skin off.

The island wasn't that large. the only building he could see was a house on the top of the sandy path winding around a small mountain.

He coasted through the alien foliage, and came to a perch on top of a giant alien mushroom.

He paused and overlooked the compound. He could see two sentries weaving around it, and two other sentries guarding the door.

He dispatched the two outside easily, then clawed his way halfway up the Gateway and hung down from it in between the two other sentries.

"How's it going?" He asked, as they pointed their hoses at him.

He swung back and forth between the white gloppy projectiles as the two robot shot at each other. Apparently they weren't programmed for fast learning, soon they had gummed up each other's hoses to the point they couldn't shoot anymore and fused each other in place.

Landing softly on his feet, he entered, padding softly over the soft expensive looking rugs.

The house had many exquisitely carved pillars holding up. The entrance way greeted him with a large statue made up of a shiny rock. Shiny rocks are usually expensive, based on his earth experience anyway, he didn't know about alien shiny rocks. But going by the fact the man could afford his own private island Leonardo just assumed that he was packing some serious green.

He wondered how much of that had been funneled into the security budget.

To the left, there was a large living room, to the right, the kitchen, in front of him was a staircase.

He looked into the dark staircase that led downward and strained his ears, He couldn't hear anything which meant it was probably a basement.

He stole upstairs past the office where the old Wolf was pacing and listening to the radio, a smaller black fox playing on the ground with a stuffed toy. He managed to ghost past the open door without the old Wolf seeing him, he didn't look into Vixens room which was helpfully labeled with an exquisitely carved plate.

He paused at the threshold of the staircase and listened, hearing a whirring sound above him, he sliced the motion sensor in two, short-circuiting it before it could sound an alarm.

Stealing the staircase to the one door and led to he listened for a moment, and not hearing anything decided to venture inside.

He opened the door to see Donatello sitting at a desk with his back to him, writing out a blueprint for something.

"Donnie?" He asked, first surprised, then worried, something about this situation didn't add up.

Donnie turned around to look at him, "Can I help you?" He asked, sounding confused.

"Donny, what are you doing here?" Leonardo asked, his eyes seizing of his brother for anything that could explain this; Electric collar? Chain around the ankle? The confused stillness that comes from a tranquilizer shot?

"We've been searching for you _all_ day, why didn't you send us a message after what Mikey went through. What have those fools done to you?"

"I have _no idea_ what you're talking about, who _are_ you?"

"I'm your brother!" Leonardo exclaimed in shock, his unease growing into a heavy dread.

"Brother? I don't have a brother." Donatello stood up, realizing that Leonardo wasn't just a guest. He screamed "help! Intruder!"

Leonardo across the room and placed a hand over Donnies mouth, putting a finger to his lips and shushing his little brother.

"Donnie, I don't know what they did to you, but you can't _possibly_ buy this. You're a turtle! You can't actually believe that you belong on a desert planet. If you just think about this-argh! "

His body convulsed as an electric shock wracked his body.

"Leo you fool. " He reprimanded himself as he blacked out. " You let one sneak up on you with a taser."

welp. that was chapter 2. No space mutants in that one.

I think It would be really cool to have an episode where we got to see one of the other planets that had been attacked by the Kraang, most of the mutants we've seen touched humans and became mutant humanoids. Mutants on other planets would be even more alien and strange. I also want to see an Donnitello episode from the space ark. And no. I don't count the one where fugitoid got beheaded. That was a space gremlin episode that had Donnie fiddling with robotics in the background. Getting an episode like that wouldn't even be hard. All you would have to do Is start an episode with Leo and Karai in a cell and Leo saying something like. "The last time I messed up that badly was on an alien planet on the other side of the galaxy." and then Karai could say something like. "Now that's a story I need to hear." and it would work because she didn't get to hear about the space stuff and the turtles were gone for three months, so there had to be more adventures that we didn't get to see.

Flashback episode, Nicktoons. make it happen.

Sorry about not posting when I said I would, I got distracted by life, the universe, and everything. That happends to everyone sometime right?


	3. Chapter 3

Hey guys, sorry the last chapter was such a mess. This is my first time using and for some reason their formatting system just ATE all of my scene breaks. I will be editing my work to change the scene breaks from now on.

(chapter three)

" I don't care how much, just get over here and get me installed, I want a better system. All I've got is the backup bots from the basement!" Vatu snapped at his communicator .

Donnie waited patiently for him to finish his call before approaching.

"Sir? who was that?"

"Some vandal, Don't worry about that little thief, he's nothing but a con man."

Donnie Looked at his fingers. "He looked like me." He said quietly.

"You were left orphaned here by a tourist, he probably just came from the same planet as you and decided to use that to try and con you into running away with him so they could ransom you back. _Stay away_ from that criminal. The guard will be by next cycle to pick him up."

Donnie nodded and leaned against the door, waiting for the old wolf to pass him and move upstairs.

" _I should return to my work_." He thought to himself, but found his gaze drifting off towards the basement.

Somehow he had avoided thinking about where he had come from his whole life, preferring instead to remain future oriented and pursue the study of science to help with the efforts to restore the planet to it's former glory.

But if that creature down there really was from his planet... well... It couldn't hurt him from inside a cage.

Maybe he could just ask it a few questions.

He make a quick pros-cons list inside his brain and soon started to fill the pros side till it far outpaced the cons.

Taking a breath to steady himself he sneaked down the stairs.

" _What are you doing_!?"

He cringed at Vixen's scaving tone and looked back at her, smiling nervously.

"Scientific research?"

"You were told not to go speaking them." She snapped.

"Aren't you even a _little bit_ curious about where he came from?"

"No, if you're smart you wouldn't be either. This is a harsh planet, you need to keep your focus on the things that matter if you want to survive this."

Donatello sighed, "I guess you're right."

He turned and ascended the stairway to his room.

Sirens blared. Instantly alert he spun and ran into the office past where Vixie huddled on the floor in terror and grabbed the sides of the window to peer out.

Unlike the con turtle that had entered stealthily, only crossing the paths of a few bots, These newcomers were making an entrance with a bang.

Bots swarmed out into the compound.

A strange black and whitish alien smashed one apart with a long weapon he couldn't see very well.

At first he thought that was its natural coloring, then he realized it was wearing war paint.

"Raider." He thought.

Vatu raced by the door. "We're under attack, take Vixie and hide!"

He nodded, "Right." He scooped her up. She dropped her plushie and wailed.

He paused to pick up the small toy before fleeing downstairs intending to hide on the second level of the basement.

Darting by the door to the first level of the basement he froze, something in the corner of his eye stopping him cold.

He could see the other turtle in its cage, gripping the bars and pressing on them to test their strength. As if it could sense him its head turned to pin him with its gaze.

They watched each other for a moment.

A shiver went through him, something about that other turtle was just eerie.

He ignored it and continued downstairs, He huddle in a closet, hugging Vixie close to him.

He clutched her a bit closer as a shock wave traveled through the ground through his bones.

"Was that an explosion?" He asked himself.

Vixie whimpered and looked at him. "Can you do anything to stop this?" She asked.

He looked into her terrified eyes and wondered that himself... Could he do anything to stop this?

Then he spotted a broken bot in the corner, waiting for maintenance.

"I think maybe I can." He said. He set her down and rushed over to the droid, yanking the arm off of it he traced a finger along the hose until he found the tank and yanked that out of the bot too.

Grabbing two wires and holding them against each other, he pointed the arm at his back and squeezed the wires together, setting off a shot. A large white blob stuck to his shell and he stuck the tank on it.

Hoisting the gun up to chest level, he ascended the stairs. He glanced through the doorway at the other turtle as he went by. It was pressing up against the side of its cage to get a better look at him. Creepy. Looking away, he ignored it and kept going until he was out of the building.

He spotted the black-and-white creature running around outside. It swung something and a loud crack filled the air, something small and fast flew at the bots, exploding on contact.

Before it could pull another explosive out , a horde of bots descended on it, shooting it mercilessly until it was fused to the floor in a white cocoon.

Donnie raised his gun scanning for other opponents when a green blur descended on the bots.

He got another shock as he saw another one of his kind sweeping through the bots like a tsunami.

It moved like fluid but every one of its strikes was undeniably solid. It was fast enough to take a bot apart in an eye-blink.

Another one joined the fray, Swinging and whooping for joy if it did so.

"Hey guys! Donnie's joined the fight! And he's got some new tec thing!"

He felt confused by this new commentary, how did it know his name? And why was it so happy to see him?

A thrill of terror went through him, this wasn't and ordinary raid, They'd come for him specifically. He should have known something like that would happen eventually, resources were scarce, and he counted as one.

His skin prickled. A yell pierced the air.

He following it to its source and what he saw made his breath hitch.

Vatu and Vixen were being held, but not by any ordinary force. They were suspended in mid air . On the ground in front of them was another alien in yellow. His heart threatened to beat itself out of his chest in terror. A psychic. He'd only have one shot to take out something that dangerous. He raised his gun and pointed it straight at her face, squeezing the wires in it together it shot off one round right at her face.

It struck true and latched onto her face, forcing her to release her hold on his family while struggling to pull off the suffocating ooze.

"HEY" Someone screamed to his side. It was the turtle in red. "What's the big idea!" He demanded.

Donnie pointed the gun at the other turtle's torso. "Surrender now and I'll save her from suffocating." He pronounced coolly.

The other turtle seemed taken back, but only for a moment, Then it narrowed its eyes, and, pulling down its third eyelid, charged him.

He lowered the hose sight till it was pointed at the other turtle's feet and fired repeatedly.

The other turtle was strong, it managed to pull itself out of the first few globs, and when it couldn't run anymore it got on all fours and stubbornly tried to claw its way toward him with its weapons. He had to cover it completely to stop it.

"Donnie?" He spun to face his last opponent, the shortest turtle. It didn't seem to have as much fight in it as the other turtle. It's weapons were drooping in its hands down to the floor.

"Put the weapon down and surrender," He demanded.

Its eyes watered at the edges and its voice began to shake. "Don't you recognize us?"

"Put down you weapons!" He demanded.

Its hands slackened and the sticks fell to the ground. Donnie didn't relax until his father came over and took over, summoning the guard to take them away.

A white android of some kind appeared with them, and started to pull any trick it could think of to convince them to let the raiders go. But Donnie wasn't listening. He scrubbed the white ooze off his shell and took in a breath of relief as the crushing weight of the tank fell off his back. His legs ached from carrying it, but not as much as he would have expected for someone who spent as much time indoors as he did.

One of the guards pulled off the glob covering the red-masked turtles mouth. It started screaming.

"You rotten Aliens! When I find out what you did to my brother I'll return the favor three fold!"

Irritated, Donnie addressed the other turtle a bit more curtly then needed. "You brother is fine, We didn't hurt him. Through if we did he'd only have himself to blame for breaking and entering."

The other turtle looked confused. "I'm not Talking about Leo, Donnie, I'm talking about you."

"I've lived here my entire life, I've never been mistreated once." He spat.

"What did you do to him? Are you doing the same thing to Leo right now?"

The turtle pressed itself against its chains trying to break out of them, screaming its throat raw.

"LEO! LEO! LEEEOOO!"

"Take that screaming banshee away from here," Vatu snapped, "I'm sick of listening to it."

The guards took them away, the Android followed behind, asking questions about bail fees.

He checked on Vixen and Vatu. They insisted they were fine and that he should get some rest.

He said his goodnights and went up to his room, turning out the lights and laying in bed, waiting for sleep to come.

It didn't.

He was too consumed by questions. Why did those turtle act like they knew him? Call him brother? Try to take him away? Was it something that was part of the alien culture he'd never known? Or was there something about these turtles in specific that drew them to him?

He twisted and turned, trying to get comfortable. But the questions wouldn't go away.

He clutched the bed cloth in frustration, then let go and threw himself out of bed and pressed himself against the door.

He waited until he heard the sound of the lights clicking out then waited twenty minutes more.

When he couldn't take it anymore he threw the door open and slinked down the stairway, ghosting past the bedroom doors he descended into the basement.

He was getting answers tonight one way or another.

Halting at the door of the basement, he pressed himself to the side of the door frame and glanced in.

The other turtle was awake and kicking the bars of his cage. Throwing himself against them he tried to stretch out his arm to reach his swords.

A futile gesture, they were all the way across the room from him next to that long white thing Vatu had taken off Donnie earlier. What even was that thing? He couldn't remember how he had gotten hold of it.

The turtle stopped straining against the bars and, almost as if it could sense him, turned to look him straight in the eyes.

The sudden intensity sent a shiver up his spine and over his scalp. Maybe this wasn't such a good Idea.

"Donnie." The other turtle said wistfully.

He gripped the door frame tight. How did it know his name? The creepiness was starting to overpower his curiosity. He pulled back to leave.

"Wait!" The other turtle cried out stretching a hand towards him. " I know you're scared. confused. I can help you. Just... please... Don't go."

Donnie paused, something in the way the words were said started to inflame his curiosity even more.

He dared to poke his head around the door frame. "Who are you?"

"I'm _Leonardo_ , your brother."

"Why do you keep saying that?" Donnie asked, Wondering if the other turtle meant that in a biological or figurative sense.

"Because it's true!" Leo cried, then sighed, deciding to try another track.

"Your name is Donatello, and your favorite cartoon character is Yakko Warner, you can sing the countries of the world song by heart."

"Countries of what world? "

"Earth."

"I have never been to Earth."

"Okay," The other turtle threw up his hands" Maybe you can't recite it right now. But that's just because your memories are wonky." He shrugged, then tried again.

"You can't stand to watch science fiction because of all the scientific inaccuracies.

"Well, that would bug anyone."

"But you can still kick everyone's, except Mikey's, tail at the space heroes video-game. It's kind of a family joke, see, you're that one guy who always says that he's going to die while playing video games, but then never dies"

Leo cracked a smile, but it faded in the face of Donnie's lost look."Okay, maybe you had to be there to get the joke."

"You keep saying all of these things like I should understand them."

"Well you should, you just don't right now because-because-well," He threw up his hands, " I'm not really sure. But I'm sure something those foxes did-"

"I've been this family's ward for years, I trust them with my life."

"Well that's- oh, how can I make you understand? Oh! That pole looks exactly like your Bo!"

"My what?"

"That stick over by the far wall, go pick it up."

Donnie shot him a suspicious look, but went to go pick up the Bo.

"Anything look familiar?" Leo asked.

"It's a stick." Donnie said, sounding irritated.

"It's a weapon used in the ancient practice of ninjutsu."

"It's _just_ a stick."

Leo laughed," it might look like it now, but wait until you learn how to use it." Leo stepped back and outstretched a hand. "Dance with me."

"Dance? We can't dance, you're in a cage."

"Not a slow dance, Donnie," Leo struck a pose, "I'm going to lead you through a series of movements, and I want you to copy them as best as you can."

"Why?"

"Because your mind might forget some things, but I don't think your body can."

"Are you talking about muscle memory?"

"If you want to get all science-y about it."

Donnie started watching Leo's movements and imitating them, then he started to follow the movement without watching Leo.

He started to concentrate on them, getting lost in the forms until Leo just had to call them and he performed them.

This went on until he found himself balancing on his Bo and became so startled by this that he fell over.

Leo laughed again. "See! I told you I could teach you."

"This is... extraordinary. I shouldn't be able to perform feats like that. "

"A engineer wouldn't be able to perform feats like that. But a ninja can. Donnie. How much do you know about other species?"

"Not a whole lot, I've been meaning to get around to researching, but I've always been distracted by other projects."

"You haven't been studying because there isn't anything to study. You were on earth until a month ago, and earth has no relations with other planets.

If you _were_ to lookup alien species, you'd find that- there aren't any like you! Because you're not an alien, your a _mutant_! ... of an alien species."

"I'm a mutant?"

"Yes, one of four, we're the only things like us in the galaxy. If you let them keep your brothers from you, you'll never see another turtle again."

"I ... I've been entertaining you long enough, I've been here for years, and there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise."

"Oh yeah... show me the evidence."

"What?"

"Show me evidence that you've lived here your whole live."

"My memories."

"Are wrong, show me something else."

"Like _what_?" Donnie demanded.

"Show me a card your little sister made you. Like the valentine Mikey made you, Show me a hand me down from an older sibling, like the motor magazine Raph gave you after reading the covers off it. Show me some _silly little_ trifle or flourish. Like when I taught you how to make paper cranes. Show me _Something_ to imply that _any_ of these people have had an effect on your life. Even if it's pointless _, especially_ if it's pointless."

"I'm not a show animal I don't perform on command-" He paused and leveled a steely gaze at his opponent. " Actually, I _can_ think of something they taught me. The family motto. "Sentiment is for the weak, morality is fluid. The pack above all."

He turned to leave. " I don't have time for this."

As he was climbing the stair he heard a quiet voice say. "Just ask them."

He rested his hand on the rail a bit before asking"Ask who?"

"The guys, ask them to show you the evidence."

He gripped the railing a bit harder then relaxed his grip and ascended the stairway.

(end chapter)

there's chapter three- a bit shorter then usual.

Dedicated fans might notice the Yacko reference. He and Donnie share the same voice actor.


	4. Chapter 4

His hand hovered in front of the door.

"I can't believe I'm doing this. " He knocked.

The door to the ship started to open. He could hear a heated argument going on inside.

"Maybe they've managed to invent some kind of alien brain worm, like Stockman."

"Highly unlikely, Raphael." A formal sounding voice answered, "There are very few members of this planet's inhabitants who are capable of build such a thing."

"Well, they'd only need one Stockman wanna-be -"

The hull finished lowering, revealing the short turtle in the orange bandana.

"Donnie!" The turtle squealed, launching itself at him. "You're back!"

He cringed as it wrapped itself around him in a tight embrace and flung his arms outward to break its grip on him.

"I am no such thing!" He snapped. "I only came here for the process of interrogation. I demand you tell me what you thought you were accomplishing by attacking my home."

"Demand? Whatever they did to his head made him even more bossy then Leo."

The psychic approached him. " Donnie what's going on? Don't you recognize us?"

His temper was starting to rise. "I've had just about enough of you aliens messing with me by pretending we've met before. Now answer my question."

They all shared worried looks. "Wow." The male in war paint said. "Whatever they did to him really made him go whack."

"There's gotta be something we can do set him straight." The red wearing turtle said.

"Ooh, ooh, I know." The painted male answered. "I saw this show once where a guy got a knock on his head and lost his memories, and when he got another knock on his head they came back."

"The old, hit it to fix it solution, aye? I'm down."

"Casey, was this 'show' by any chance. an cartoon?" The psychic asked.

"Yeah why?"

"Lets try something else."

She put a comforting hand on his arm, "Will you let me try something?"

She was very pretty, pretty and dangerous, and he had seen just how dangerous first-hand.

Letting her poke her psychic tendrils into his brain would be a crime against self-preservation and logic.

But as he looked at her begging eyes, the combined forces of attraction and kindness forced him to reconsider his answer.

" _Forgive me alpha, my kindness always did make me weak_." He thought.

He coughed into his fists and raised a finger skyward. "I suppose that in the name of scientific curiosity, I am obligated to see where you are going with this." He said. He might be weak willed, but he did not need to broadcast that weakness.

"Thank you Donnie, this will not hurt a bit." She said, putting her hands to his temples.

The world turned black and he stood with her in a field of shadows, something in the field seemed to be calling them and she led him by the hand in the direction of the pull.

Shadows changed into concrete and he felt the cold cement press into the calluses on his feet.

She seemed to be searching for something to show him as she looked around the room, her eyes fell on something behind him and she lifted her arms over her face and screamed.

He spun to see what she was looking at and saw a beast wrapped in cloth with red eyes and naked tail lunging at them with gnashing teeth and claws outstretched.

He opened his mouth to scream, but before the sound could escape his throat he found himself back in the ship. They both broke out in a cold sweat and started panting.

"Is he back?" The turtle in red asked.

"I-I just don't know what went wrong." She stammered, "One moment I was leading him into a memory about the sewers and then next we were being attacked by Master splinter."

"That's impossible! Master Splinter would never attack us."

"I don't know... Didn't he, like, try to stab Leo when the Rat king came back?" The other hominid asked.

"That happened once! Maybe twice... My point is, it's not something he makes a habit of."

The psychic grasped her fingers together and looked at him with pleading eyes.

"I am so, so sorry Donnie, that was not supposed to happen. I promise it won't happen again. "

" _Well, I sure that even psychics have off days_ ," one side of his brain said.

" _What are you an idiot? Don't let her do that again_." The other side of his brain said.

"I forgive you, you can try again." He said brightly.

" _You moron!_ " His brain shrieked.

She placed her hands on his face again, and a _blinding_ pain flared through his limbs.

He grabbed the psychic's arms and shoved her so far back the other alien hominid had to put his hand on her shoulders to stabilize her.

"Whoa, not cool."

"Would you stop that!" Donnie snapped.

"I don't know what went wrong!" she exclaimed. "I thought I was doing it right, then all of a sudden there was a flaming sensation going through me, and my nose felt so tingly I wanted to scratch it off."

"Burning limbs? Tingly nose?" Mikey repeated, putting a finger on his cheek in thought, " I've had that sensation before ... When snapping Donnie out of that brain boggler. Hey, I wonder how many times Donnie got shocked by that thing?"

"Fourteen, I still don't believe that memory is mine but I gleaned enough from it to know the number was fourteen. I can't believe I've entertained the charade for so long, I'm leaving."

"You can't leave Don, we're your family." The turtle in red insisted.

"Dude, I've got my hockey stick right here."

"Casey, we are not going to try the amnesia cure you learned from a cartoon."

"Maybe we just aren't thinking of the right cartoon." The youngest turtle said, "I once watched show about a talking dog whose pet sitter had gotten amnesia and was about to tell the talking dog's owners about the dog's ability to talk when the talking dog gave him his favorite cookies which were so delicious that the man remembered everything. And I know just what we can use." The youngest turtle said this in such a rush no one could catch all of what he said before he ran off into the bowels of the ship.

Donnie put his hands on his hips, "show me the evidence."

"What?"

"Show me something to prove that I was raised with you."

"Well, we didn't exactly have enough time to go shopping while our planet was blowing up Donnie, we had to leave behind all of our things on earth."

"Likely story, I'm leaving." He had tried to humor the other turtle and what had it gone him? Burning limbs, a walk back in the rising cold, and the desire to scratch off his nose.

"Ta-DA! This will fix you. A fresh out of the replicators, New York pizza."

The youngest turtle returned carrying a yellowish piece of bread that he tried to shove under Donnie's nose. Donnie recoiled from it, "I am not accepting any food from you." He said firmly.

"Pleeeaaaase," the younger turtle begged, looking up at him with puppy dog eyes.

Donnie sighed, _"This weakness of will is going to kill me_." He thought, he held out his palm. "Okay."

The other turtle handed him the sticky food item and he sniffed it before nibbling it cautiously. The nibbling turns to munching, then to gobbling, and before he knew it he had devoured the whole thing.

"Mmm, that was _really_ good. Like ... the _best_ thing I have ever tasted."

"That's because you're a New York turtle yo, this food source comes from your natural habitat."

Donnie chuckled and amusement, "I could almost believe that." The humor died away quickly and he looked at the other turtle solemnly. "You guys don't strike me as a bunch of bad kids, what made you turn raider?"

"We aren't Raiders!" The older turtle snapped. "It wasn't even our idea to come to space. We just got dragged out here by those lousy Triceritrons. If those losers hadn't invaded the earth we wouldn't be out here."

"I can understand that life can be harsh like that, but it's not an excuse to attack others."

"You don't need an excuse when the people you're attacking is a bunch of dirty kidnappers."

"Don't talk about my family like that!"

"They've brainwashed you, man." Casey added.

"Okay, that is enough!" Donnie snapped, "I was starting to feel bad for you, I was even contemplating helping you break your brother out of jail because I thought it maybe you guys could turn his life around. But now I see he is exactly where he belongs and is probably better off for it."

He turned and walked out, the cold had risen to a nearly unbearable peak outside.

"Leo?" The turtle in red asked. "You know where Leo is? You better spill or I will-"

The younger turtle moved in between them, hands in the air, "Okay, okay, we're sorry, we didn't mean to upset you, just please, please help us get Leo back."

Donnie paused and looked back at them. If he was the smart turtle everyone told him he was he'd leave them and go home before this cold killed him. He was so used to being an indoor turtle that he'd forgotten just how harsh this planet could get. He wondered what would become of the other turtle. Would they make special accommodations to account for his inability to adapt to this planets atmosphere? Or would they take his space suit from him and allow him to freeze in the cold? This was a harsh unsympathetic planet... The latter option was the most likely.

If this was a planet where they had options like rehabilitation he'd think the other turtle would be better off in custody. But this wasn't a planet with options, this was a planet where you either learned to adapt to the cold or found an Alpha to provide for you. And he wouldn't wish this cold on any turtle.

He sighed. "Very well. You," He pointed at the turtle in orange, "and you." He pointed at the turtle in red." Come with me. The hominids stay here."

He was compassionate, not insane.

(scene break)

Raph and Mikey peered at Donnie from the back of the shuttle.

"How are we supposed to help him when everything we do seems to send him into spiral of psychic pain?" Mikey asked.

"Maybe we need to just keep chugging through, like pulling of a band-aid. it'll hurt at first but once we've got it off maybe the other memories will come flooding back and we can get him back."

"Perhaps showing him something from his past will trigger his memory. like in my cartoon." Mikey said hopefully. But Raph shot down his hopes fast.

"This isn't like the past. We didn't have time to grab anything to take with us like when we ran away to the farmhouse. Not even ice cream kitty." Raph snapped.

"Perhaps we can show him a screen of something from earth?" Mikey asked, trying again.

"It would have to be something emotional and that only exist on the one planet.

"So a clip of a good wave won't work because other planets have them?"

"Donnie never been far enough out of the sewer... that kind of put a damper on things..."

"I know- we'll use the food replicaters to make him a pizza."

"He just ate pizza."Raph sighed, "Rat king, the Brain Boggler, why can't he get a fun memory, like the time you painted Spike pink so I demolished you in morning practice."

Mikey glared at it, that wasn't a happy memory.

"We're here." Donnie said, parking the shuttle and pressing a button to open the door.

Mikey followed his brainy brother outside and tried to catch his eye. Donnie made sure to not look his way, so he looked at Donnie's breath.. Donnie breath paled in the air, had it gotten that cold? Mikey was glad for his space suit, he wondered what happened to Donnie's.

Donnie lead the way up the hill, his legs trembling. Mikey frowned at Raph, trying to read if He had noticed that too.

The older turtle was marching on the compound with his chin jutted out and his shoulders hunched. Looked like his brother was in attack mode again. It would probably be smartest not to talk to him. Not that that was going to stop Mikey.

"Hey, have you noticed Donnie seems kind of cold?"

"Yeah, being cold when it's freezing out, good observation skills Mikey." Raph grouched.

Mikey frowned, _" you see what I'm doing, Raph? This is my extreme frown."_ Mikey thought.

But Raph kept his eyes on the compound ahead of them and didn't tear his eyes away from it until Donnie collapsed in front of them.

"Donnie!" they both exclaimed, they rushed over to their brother and checked him.

"Dude! I'm not sure he's awake!"

"Lets get him inside." Raph said, lugging Donnie onto his back.

Mikey wasn't usually the one to jimmy the lock, that was usually Donnie, and Failing him Leo, and failing Leo, Raph's Sais, but Leo must have done a real number on the lock when he broke in the other day because it didn't give him any trouble.

"Donnie's not talking, Rath. Thats not good, I don't like this." Mikey noted on the verge of panic.

"I know, I know. lets get him inside. " Rath said with tone that wasn't as reassuring as Mikey wanted.

They must have trashed the security pretty bad the last time they were here. Because nothing tried to stop them. It wasn't even that difficult to unlock the door. Leo must've shaken something loose when he had broken in here the first time.

The room adjacent to the front entrance had a couch in which they lay Donnie on, there weren't any blankets on the couch because for some reason that Mikey couldn't understand they decided to hang the blankets on the walls. Raphael pulled one off the wall and threw over their brother, Mikey took a moment to look around.

He didn't really care much for the house, for one thing, their living room looked more like a waiting room. They even have some kind of bizarre modern art piece that looks like one of Rath's favorite wrestlers had taken a chair and sculpted this piece by slamming it into his opponents.

He turned his attention back to his brothers, "how is he doing?"

Raph didn't answer. Choosing instead to keep his attention on rubbing Donnie's shell through that odd blanket.

Donnie's shivering slowed down and nearly stopped. He gripped the blanket tighter and sat up. "That's better, thank you."

"Geez Don, couldn't you have put your suit on first?"

"What suit? I'm an indoor turtle." That sent a ripple of fresh rage through Mikey, going by the way he clenched his jaw, Raphael had a similar reaction. He wished he could plant ten years worth of pranks in this house, but knew he wouldn't have the time. Maybe he could plant one that was worth a year of big ones. Or maybe he could just pull a Raph. Not his first impulse usually, but he might be willing to make an exception for the aliens that did... That. To his brother. If they did anything like to Leo...

He decided to go to his go to for dealing with situations like this, which was to stop thinking about it and hope the problem fixed itself. Or barring that, one of his older brothers fixed it. which was usually what happened.

Donnie pushed himself to his feet, still shaking a bit from the cold. "Basement 's this way." he sniffed.

He led them downstairs to a door that he pulled on. "Oh, it's been locked."

"Lets smash it and go."

"That would set off an alarm." Donnie said, "I bet the key is in the office, It won't be that hard to find."

He turned around, still hugging the blanket to himself and started for the office.

Mikey looked to Raph to see what he thought about this. Raph looked annoyed, but followed their brainy brother up the stairs.

Donnie trudged up to the office door and stood in front of it, Raph and Mikey standing on his sides. Donnie reached for the handle and Mikey noticed a sliver of light in the crack of the door.

"Uh-oh." He thought, acting on instinct he slid into the shadows.

Vatu threw the door open just as Donnie was about to turn it, Raph slid behind the door and Donnie hid the blanket behind his back and angled his body to hid most of his Bo.

"Donatello? what are you doing here?"

"Uh, I just can't seem to sleep." Donnie said, making discreet gestures with his hand, waving Raph up the stair. The older turtle ghosted up the stairs like a shadow.

"I was hoping you had something I could read, It might help me sleep."

"Go to bed Donnie, Just relax, We won't be having a repeat of last evening."

"Oh well, If you say so." Donnie said, smiling and backing away. Vatu watched him as he walked backwards all the way upstairs into his room. Once Donnie shut the door the old wolf went back into his office. Mikey shuffled up close to the door and peeked in.

Vatu picked up the phone on his desk, "Thanks for holding ... Nothing worth worrying about, just one of my kids ... The new one. No no, I got the door alarm back online and locked the other turtle up." He held up a key, turned it in his palm a few times then placed it on his desk.

"I'm not worried..." Vatu stopped to listen, walking around his desk.

Mikey took the few second he had and rolled into the room and under the desk. He could see the key just poking out over the side.

The wolf made a few mm-hmms to whoever he was talking to and Mikey pulled out a kunai.

"Don't worry about it, I can keep one of my psychics near him while he's working , as long as he's with them sometime within a 24 hour period that should be enough to keep the trance going."

Mikey used the tip of the kunia to very gently tip the key farther over the side of the desk.

"There's an ion storm that's going to force them to move out for some kind of combat mission, they seem to be some kind of army troop, and they can't drop their mission even for something like this. When they return in a few month we should have given him enough doses of psychic energy to keep the trance going even without a psychic nearby. They won't be able to turn him back."

Mikey snarled as he worked the key over the side of the desk, letting it drop into his palm. Only the thought that he might make thing worst for his brothers by alerting whoever was the other side of the phone with his presence kept him from leaping over the desk and pulling a Raph. But he'd seen Raph pull a Raph enough times to know that didn't always work out for the best. So he waited. He hated waiting.

(scene break)

Raph waited patiently, sitting on the bed and kicking his feet back and forth.

Donnie came through the door still sniffing, "We'll just wait until he goes to bed then get key."

"Oh gee, that sounds great plan. I hope he isn't as big an insomniac as you and doesn't wait until someone comes over to take Leo someplace else." Raphael grouched.

"Well, I don't want you getting into a fight with my father. And you don't want to get into a fight with him either, he'll call the guard on you." Donnie said sitting down.

Raph rolled his eyes and looked around the room, "They actually managed convince you that you live here? This bedroom looks like it was strung together just today, probably because it was."

"Why are you still going on about that? You guys already confessed to your lies about that remember?"

Raph groaned. "Okay, answer this geek, where's all your stuff? I'd expect a nerd like you to have this place full of nuts and bolts.

"I'm an apprentice engineer and have yet to be authorized a lab of my own. So I usually go to other scientist's labs to study. I'll be getting my own this year."

"Baloney, Earth might not be the creme de la crop of the science space community, but I seen their museum, this place is a wasteland. You could science around any of the people on this planet. Don't you at least have some schematics or something you are working on?"

"You don't get an over abundance of ink and paper in a desert. Making such things would be expensive."

"Oh, like this family can't afford that?"

"I don't want to be a drain on them, so I don't ask for much."

Raph made an unhappy hrmm. "Okay, one last question. Where are your extra masks? What do you wear that one gets dirty?"

"I don't need of replacement masks, I don't need to have something on my head while this is in the wash. I don't see even remember why I wear this at all."

"Don't remember," Raph sputtered, "that's not just a piece of cloth you're wearing, don't you number how much these mean to us?"

"It's just a bit of colored cloth." Donnie pulled off his mask and threw it on the bed.

"Colored cloth can mean lots." He stood up and picked up the Mask and held it in front of his brother.

"Master Splinter said that purple combines the calm stability of blue and the fierce energy of red. The color purple is associated with nobility, _ambition_ , creativity, wisdom, _dignity_ , devotion, peace, pride. Don't you remember any of the stuff we were taught our masks mean?"

"Master who?" Donnie asked, confused.

Raph sputter. "Master who? Master WHO!? You little-"

"Ahh!" Donnie exclaimed, recoiling in terror, he hadn't recovered enough to run away.

" _You_ -" Raph threatened, leaning over him. He grabbed Donnie and pulled him into a hug.

"Its OK. It's going to be OK." He pressed his face into Donnie's neck. "I'll _make_ it OK."

Donnie froze uncomfortably, not sure how to process what was happening.

Mikey ran up the stairs, "Dudes! I got the key."

Raph sighed in relief "Finally. Lets go get Leo."

Donnie slid off the bed and exited, "Well said, the sooner we get you bunch on your way the better."

Mikey watched him go, looking even more worried then before.

"What's gotten into you." Raph asked, knocking his shoulder into Mikey as he walked past.

"Dude, I over heard those aliens talking about brainwashing Donnie, It's being close to them that's making him like this, We need to get him away from those freaks." Mikey said in panicked rush.

"That's what's doing it? Huh... things just got easier." Raph followed Donnie into the basement and Mikey undid the door.

Leo was sitting in lotus position, waiting. When he saw them coming he hopped to his feet and ran forward to grip the bars in excitement.

"You did talk to them! I told you they'd set everything straight."

"Yeah." Donnie replied, "they set things straight all right, they confessed that this weird relationship you keep pretend we have is all a sham."

Leo looked confused and absolutely crestfallen. "They did?" He said in a small voice that probably meant to say ' _how could you Rapheal?'_ That kid really needed to learn how to bluff. It would probably save his life one day.

Donnie opened the electric lock panel and fiddled with something or another until it unlocked.

Leo stepped out, still looking heartbroken and lost.

"Finally." Raph said, "now the four of us can go home."

"Four? There's only three of you." Donnie said looking a little confused.

Raph stepped forward and grabbed his brainy brother by the front of the shell.

It was a little satisfying to see Donnie's eyes widen that little bit before Raph yanked him forward and hit a pressure point in his neck, dropping the genius like a sack of potatoes.

(and that's chapter four.)

90's kids might recognize Mikey's cartoon as 'Corneil & Bernie' ('watch my chops' in France.)


	5. Chapter 5

Voices swirled around him, slowly they came into focus.

"Donnie!" the pink bipedal girl exclaimed. she wrapped her arms around him and tried to kiss him on the cheek.

He shoved her off violently, " who do you think you are!?" He bellowed, offended by the out-of-no-where encroachment on his person.

Something yanked him backward into a hold, his arms pinned to his sides.

"Let go of me!", He demanded. Trying to jerk out the hold and crane his head back to look at the person who had him in a hold.

It was the same turtle who had attacked him from before.

"Hey Mike, what gives? I thought getting him away from the aliens would make him better?"

"It is possible that the counselor was a particularly powerful psychic being. Donatello should return to normal after being away from their influence for hmm ... 24 hours." Fugitoid said.

Donatello gritted his teeth, he was about to demand that they let him go when his eyes fell upon the stranger he pushed away from him.

She hadn't moved from where he had shoved her, her features frozen in shock, and what looked like hurt.

He cringed against the other turtle's chest, feeling ashamed for causing her to look like that.

"Is this real? Or an act?" He wondered.

Fake or not, the hurt he caused embarrassed him so much that he didn't fight when he was dragged through a hallway and shoved into a room.

The door shut behind him and locked.

He walked across the room, turned his back to the wall and slid down it, clutching his head, he tried to think, not an easy task with all the racket going on outside.

"Come on Raph, I just want to give him breakfast."

"No Mikey, it's best if you just wait for his whatever-it-is to wear off, he's not himself right now."

"But he has to eat. Maybe if he eats familiar food it'll jog his memory."

"That only works in Sunday morning cartoons Mikey, trust me, it's best if-yikes! Casey! Why did you just wing me with a puck?"

"Sorry man, didn't mean to, just that I gotta keep my skills sharp."

"I'll give you something sharp! Mike guard the door for 10 minutes 'till I come back!"

"Sure thing bro!"

There was a clinging down the hall the two boys raced down it, insulting each other.

Donnie heard the whoosh of the door opening, and the 'Mikey' turtle entered, carrying a plate of foreign food.

"Hey Donnie!" The strange turtle said enthusiastically, "I know what you're going through a hard time right now, so I brought you breakfast, well, more like breakfast foods for a late lunch. It's your favorite!"

Donnie clutched his head.

"Hypothesis one: all my memories are false, I am an off worlder caught by aliens with psychic powers who brainwashed him into thinking that he grew up on their world.

"I guess when you say it like that, it does sound kind of hard to believe. But we'll help you figure it out. Here try some of-"

Mikey put the plates down by him, he scooted away from the plate into the corner.

"Hypothesis two: I did grow up on this world, you are the aliens with psychic powers.

And the reason you believe that I will think I'm your brother within the next day is because you will make me believe it."

The other turtles started to look uneasy "Hey man, I know this is kind of hard. But don't start-"

"Conclusion:" Donnie interrupted, " the only way to know who I am for sure-" he drew his Bo.

"- Is to escape both the lupes and the turtles, and see who I am away from their influence."

He struck out, quick as a Viper, slamming the other turtle into the wall and knocking it out.

He darted out of the room and made a break for the escape hatch.

Casey sneaked across the room with a technique that he seemed to have learned from a cartoon. "Heh, I can't believe I managed to sneak past Raph, Some ninja."

His eye's landed on Donnie and he jumped.

"What? How did yo- What'd you do to Mikey!"

"Get out of my way hominid. I don't have the patience for this." Donnie growled raising his "Bo".

He didn't know what he was hoping for, that the Hominid would turn and run maybe? If it did that he'd have to hit it in the back so it couldn't bring its comrades to stop him. Such tactics made him feel a little dirty, but the issue didn't come up.

Casey reached for his mask and flipped it down over his face. The way he gripped his weapon implied he wasn't backing down without a fight.

"I'm afraid I can't let you leave Donnie. "

" And I can't let you stop me. This is the only shot I've got at finally finding out who I am.

"Don, you don't have time to find out who you are. We have to leave to save the earth."

"That's robot seems to know what he is doing, you should be able to manage with one engineer."

"We don't need an engineer, we need our team. Think about it. If I am right and you miss the ship, then you'll never forgive yourself."

"This might be a bad decision, but it's my decision to make. I might have regrets, but at least I know that they will be mine!"

"Wrong answer."

The hominid leaped at him. A clumsy untrained gesture. A well-timed swipe based more on instinct than thought spun the hominid into a wall.

Casey clutched his stomach and groaned.

Donnie approached. Bo raised. Ready to knock his opponent out.

Casey threw out his arm and managed to get Donnie in the face. Knocking the turtle off balance.

Casey staggered to his feet and dragged himself away. Donnie shook his head and snarled.

Casey ducked into a room. Donnie sprinted into the room after.

He got a shock when he recognized the room. It was the one the psychic had shown him in his mind.

"Donatello."

He turned and screamed. The giant rat had appeared behind him.

"Donatello?" The rat asked in concern. Approaching.

" Get away from me!" Donnie screamed, backing away so fast he fell on his back and could only throw his arms over his head to defend himself.

The rat moved so gracefully inside its robes that it seemed to glide backward away from him.

It stood on the other side of the room from him. Waiting for him to make the next move.

Donnie watched it for a long moving until his hyperventilating had slowed to a stop. He pushed himself onto his feet and started to circle the rat, observing it.

It watched him patiently, and with a hint of concern.

"Are you feeling well, Donatello?"

"Who are you, how do you know who I am."

The rat seemed surprised by this, it's expression melded into one of contemplation.

"You don't recognize me?"

"No."

"Are you sure? Let any thought that comes to mind have your full attention."

This was surreal, so surreal Donnie was actually willing to put his escape on hold to humor it. "You remind me of a character in a story."

"Do I? And how does the story go?"

"There was a man, who loved a woman, but there was another man who is jealous.

He burned the first man's house with the woman in it, and the two men became enemies."

"Is at the end of the story?"

"No, the first man adopted four sons, and each one of them went on to have a story of their own."

"I would like to hear them."

"The first son was very obedient to their father. Except once, he met a girl who is one of their enemies, and he thought he saw good her.

So he kept attempting to convince her to join their side. He nearly succeeded, but one day she went he continues to look for to this day."

"The second son was just as diligent fight their enemies, but he was equally likely to turn his ire on his brothers.

One day, his father attempted to teach him the error of his ways. But he refused to listen. So he asked his son to fight his brothers.

He dodged every blow until they were instructed to start insulting him. Then every blow landed.

He learned his lesson and vowed to control his anger.

The youngest son often came with them when they were patrolling, one day they came across a monster.

The first three brothers wouldn't come near it, but the youngest brother showed it kindness, and in this way won a friend.

"You skipped one, what happened to the second youngest child."

"Oh, you don't want to know what happened him."

"Why not?"

"His story's very sad."

"That doesn't mean it isn't worth telling."

"Well, one day when they were patrolling, they met a boy.

The boy wanted to help them. But he was inexperienced, and didn't have what it took to help.

The other three brothers gave up on him, but the middle child was worried that he would hurt himself, and tried to teach him to fight.

Eventually, the boy proved himself unteachable, so the middle child sent him away."

"And is at the end of the story?"

"No, they met the boy again. He had joined the enemy, but wanted to be a spy, to help them. The other three brothers were fine with this, but not the middle child.

The middle child thought that he would wind up getting hurt. He tried to convince his brothers of this, but they wouldn't listen.

He tried to convince the boy of this too, but he wouldn't listen either.

The boy was- lost. And the middle child tried to find a way to bring them back. But they never did."

"That is a very sad story."

"Yeah, never understood what the point that was."

"Did the brothers ever learn to listen to the middle child?"

Donnie looked lost."I don't know." he muttered.

"Perhaps that isn't the end of the story."

"I don't know, I don't even know why I relate to it, I don't even have any brothers."

"Maybe you don't feel listened to."

"Ha, that can't be it. I'm an engineer from myopex nine, when I speak people listen."

He turned to leave, "I don't even know what I'm doing here. Time to leave."

The rat opened its mouth to say something, Donnie hit a button to shut the program off, and swung his Bo back to knock out the teen trying to sneak up behind him.

"I've wasted enough time as it is."  
(scene break)

"GUYS!"

Mikey dragged Casey into the pilot room.

The others crowded around them.

"What happened?" Leo asked.

"Donnie got out!"

"What how?"

"... I just wanted to bring him something to eat."

"Oh for the love of- I left him alone for two minutes!" Raph bowed his head "... With Mikey... To chase Casey..." He closed his eyes, "This is all my fault."

"Ok guys, let's split up. Mikey, Fugitiod, take the bikes and go into town. Raph, April, you search the desert with me." Leo ordered.

"What if we can't find him by sundown, as soon as the ion storm breaks we'll have to leave immediately or risk being stuck here for another two weeks," Fugitoid asked.

Leo opened his mouth to reply and stopped. For a moment he looked lost, then he straightened up and marched out the room.

"Let's just make sure it doesn't come to that."  
(end chapter)

Poor Casey. He just wanted to stop his friend from making a mistake he'd regret. Casey was even smart enough to pull up Leo's Splinter program to distract Donnie long enough for him to catch his breath and try a sneak attack. Didn't do him much good tho. Guess that's why you don't try to sneak up on a ninja.


	6. Chapter 6

Donnie turned back to look at the large expanse of desert that he had just crossed and sighed.

He picked up his bo and started drawing into the sand

Scenario one-

Go with the turtles.

Outcome 1- Save a planet

Outcome two- Become slave, mind overcome, and possibly used for evil.

Scenario 2 - Stay in the desert.

Outcome one- Return home the same- help end the resource war.

Outcome 2- Remember halfway through that they were right- try to find a way through ion storm- possible lost of planet in case of failure.

Donnie looked over his notes with rising concern.

"Oh, why didn't I stay on the ship, I could have hacked into their data-banks and checked if the data matched their story." He said to himself.

"Why,maybe they were lying about us being related , but telling the truth about needing my help saving their planet." He scratched out his notes with his Bo.

"Maybe I should volunteer to go with them if they promise to return me here after we finish. Oh, but I'd have to wear a band. I don't have a band, And they could just lock me in the brig once they took off."

He tried to think, every problem had a solution didn't it? how could he balance the risk to a possible fictional planet against the risk of his mind being used for ill.

He broke out into sweat. what did they mean by save the earth anyway? If you asked anyone on this planet what a comment like that meant they'd say it meant destroy ones enemy.

Did they want him to build bombs? Missiles? Chemical weapons? Did they find a kraaang facility they wanted him to pick the security on so they could steal the mutagen?

Maybe they'd mutate dissidents and send them back home as a warning to anyone who'd try to cross them.

Family members would have to try to care for the half sentient mutation while attempting find any lingering trace of the person they were before.

He broke out in cold sweat, giving himself temporary permission to inventory all the ways he could think of to kill people, he clutched his staff with white knuckles as the death count rose higher.

It wouldn't be so, he wouldn't let it. He had to escape. He didn't know what the population count of earth was, But if he allowed some of his designs to be mass produced he could become responsible for killing just as many people.

He had to keep moving. He looked across a ravine with a log placed across it like a makeshift bridge, it looked a bit unstable, maybe he should try a different route.

"Guys, look! it's Donnie."

"Donnie!" April called.

He clenched his bo tighter at the sight of them coming, then, coming to a snap decision, ran across the log.

"No!" They screamed as the log began to crack beneath his feet, he managed to make it to the other side before it broke, falling into the ravine.

Don stumbled forward and landed on his hands and knees, he flipped over onto his back and then scrabbled away from them, looking at them with eyes wide with fear.

"Donnie, what were you thinking!?" Leo exclaimed.

"Are you trying to get yourself killed?"" Raphael asked.

"Why won't you guys just leave me alone?" Donnie cried.

"Because we need you, Don."

"We can't replace you."

"I won't let you use my capabilities to hurt people!"

"Wasn't that what Vatu wanted you to do anyway?"

That gave him pause, was it? He wanted to help them end the war and bring in an era of peace that no living member of the planet had ever known.

But how was he going to achieve that? He wanted to find a way to create more resources so there wouldn't be as much reason to fight.

And maybe wake up a few of the sleeping giants of tec that had been uncovered in the ruins, to scare people off the battle field.

But was that what everyone else had in mind? Or did they expect weapons? His heart throbbed hard in his chest.

He felt he was on the urge of hyperventilating.

"l-leave me alone. why won't you just LEAVE MY ALONE TO THINK!" he roared, the whirling thoughts in his brain felt overwhelming.

"I saw that robot overlooking schematics before you took me way! He's just as good maybe even better an engineer than I am. There's nothing I can do for you that he couldn't."

"You're wrong Donnie, we do need you. The team can't functional without you."

"Yeah, it's us against the universe. It's always been four. We don't know how to be three."

"I don't believe you. Leave me alone." Donatello snapped.

"Okay guys, I got this." April said. she raised her hands, and levitated a tree in between them.

"Go now !" she commanded, sweating from the exertion.

Leonardo jumped onto the log, ran across it, and jumped onto the other side, Raphael close on his heels.

Donatello rolled onto his feet and ran towards the forest.

Leo and Raphael closed the distance quickly, intending to tackle him, but an unseen force blasted them away from the sky.

Donnie skidded to a stop in and looked back, just as confused as they were about the blast, he looked up and paled at the sight of the shuttle lowering itself beside him.

It opened and the ambassador and his daughter exited.

"Donnie, we were so worried about you!" She exclaimed.

"Oh great, just what we these two losers to show up." Raphael griped.

Leonardo drew his sword's. "How many times do we have to beat you before you realize messing with our family doesn't pay? Leave now and nobody gets hurt."

""Funny, I was about to say the same thing to you." Vatu snapped his fingers, robot sentries started to fly out of the shuttle.

"Come with us Don." Vixen cooed,"we'll get you back where you belong."

Donnie backed to a few tentative steps away from her then turned on his heel and ran into the forest.

"What are you-wait!" she cried, before running after him.

The hard beats of his steps, the rhythm of his ragged breath, and the slapping of his palms against the vines he shoved out of his way were all Donnie heard as he fled.

Breathing became hard, his throat dried, his breathing became ragged. His nose and eyes burned.

A long forgotten instinct awoke, warning him he needed to escape this dry environment before it was his death.

"Get inside, get inside," the instinct urged, "Shelter from the sun will save you.

His instincts picked up something else his conscious mind didn't comprehend, he skidded to a stop, not knowing why.

Vixen skipped to a stop by him, "What's the matter?" She asked.

"Something is here." He replied looking around.

He didn't see any movements except for the vines swinging in the wind, but he could feel a presence.

He turned round and around just trying to get a bead on what was giving him that feeling.

"I think you're imagining things-" Vixen said before one of vines wrapped around her and lifted her up the tree tops.

"Vixen!" Donnie cried. A vine snapped around his wrist like a vise and dragged him after her.

Something moved in the tree tops to look at them, it looked like a huge mass of vines twisted into the form of a wolf. Something else stirred too, a large beast that must have once been a lupine but had been mutated with something that gave it the horns of a elephant beetle.

"Hunter bugs!" Vixen cried.

Don reach for his Bo in a practiced movement he'd almost forgotten, and put his finger on a button, A sharp shock reverberated through the vines. slackening their grip on him.

He leaped over across Vixen and sliced open the vines gripping her with a kunia, how did that even get in his belt?

She landed gracefully on a branch, and snapped forward, grabbing his wrist and pulling him with her as she bounded through the treetops.

The mutant Hunter bugs chased them until they came to a dead end. The forest ended at the edge of a cliff that bottomed out into a deep canyon.

"It's a dead end." Vixen muttered, climbing out as far as the branches would let her to look.

Donnie climbed out onto the end of the branch overlooking the canyon with her. "Look, it's a Kraang ship." He said, pointing.

Over at one end of the canyon was a copy of the technodrome rusting in a crater of now pink fleshy earth..

A waterfall of sand flowed in crashing on top of the ship and spilling over the sides, surrounding it in a viscous pool.

Suddenly, the branch they are standing on snapped, dropping them both down the side of the cliff.

Donny caught Vixen's wrist and braced himself as the branch came into contact with the side of the cliff.

Keeping a hand on her, he gently led her to shift her weight back and forth as they skateboarded down the side of the cliff into the canyon.

The makeshift board hit the bottom and kept going, Donnie shifted his weight so the momentum of it would bring him closer and closer to the ship.

When it started to slow enough that he could jump off he and Vixen leaped, and hit the ground running.

"Where are we going?"

"Into the ship! we can hide from Hunter bugs there."

Come on, just 50 more feet.

There was an explosion of sand, the dust cleared to reveal a Hunterbug clawing it's way onto the surface.

Four more Hunter bugs flung sand out of their way as they climbed out of the dirt.

Donnie halted, Vixen skidded to a stop next to him "I think we should go back, we can hide until dark and sneak back to the shuttle." she said.

Her voice brought the urging back."Get inside, get inside. Indoors will save you from the sun."

"You go back, I'm going through." Donnie said, pulling out his staff.

He ran at the Hunter bugs, and, using his bo staff, pole vaulted over them, their snapping jaws missing his feet by an inch.

He landed hard on the Sandy, fleshy soil, ignoring the unsettling feeling of the not-quite quicksand swirling through round his ankles as he made his way into the pool of sand,

The alien sensation of it made his skin crawl as he made his way to the ship. Pressing his palms through the sand-fall to touch the rusted metal, he groped around for control panel.

He could hear the swishing of the Hunter bugs' legs through the water as they waded their way into the pool after him.

The knowledge that they could swim made his skin prickle.

His desperate groping increased in fervency as they closed in on him.

He found the control panel as one of them started to approach striking distance, he was just starting to reach for his Bo when a psychic blast shook the monster, drowning it.

Vixen waded into the pool after him, blasting the Hunter bugs as she passed them.

He somehow managed to fumble blindly into plugging in an access code, slamming his fingers down on the keys as the sand rolling over his fingers started rubbing them raw.

The door opened, he held his breath he shut his eyes and clambered in through the Sandy waterfall, clambering onto the the cool metal floor of the ship's entrance.

Vixen climbed up beside him, giving her fur a good shake to get the sand out of it. Exchanging worried looks, they started to make their way down in the bowels of the ship.

(scene break)

"Remind me again why we aren't smashing these creeps?" Raph asked.

"Because, that would take time but we don't have.. And we can't risk losing Donnie" Leo replied.

They darted between the tree trunks, dodging the projectiles sailing over their heads.

The four sentries following them retracted their hoses, and extended wheels out of their arms.

The bots dropped on all fours and used to be additional power to speed around the two turtles and line up in formation in front of them.

They raise their blades to attack, but before either side could strike, Root rots extended their vines and grabbed the sentries, dragging them into the treetops.

"Don't see that everyday." Raph noted.

"We don't have time to gape let's go."

"Stop right there, you're not getting-" Vatu started to claim, trying to get the drop on them when the old Wolf was grabbed by the vines and dragged up into the treetops,

Vatu screamed as he saw he was being dragged towards Hunter bugs and Root Rots.

"See ya, wouldn't want to be ya." Raph quipped.

"Raph." Leo said. "What?" Raph asked, not getting Leo's meaning, then the lightbulb went off. "Oh come on, you can't be serious." He added, realizing Leo wanted to save the stupid man.

Raph sighed, and sheathed up his Sais. "So what's the plan?"

"Grab my ankles, spin me, then let go. I'll do the rest."

Raph grabbed him and spun around and around like a spinning top, and then let go, sending him sailing towards the vines, Leo pulled all of his limbs into his shell, letting his katanas poke out of his arm holes, and letting his shell spin like a giant throwing star.

He sailed past the vines, slicing them as he went by, then pulled out and landed gracefully on a branch.

The old Wolf landed unceremoniously on the ground, then scrabbled out of his bindings and ran back towards the shuttle.

Leonardo heard a rustling behind him and looked back to see a pair of Hunter bugs crawling towards him up the tree. "I _so_ don't have time for you right now."

He leaped through the roof of the treetops toward the direction he believed Donnie to have gone. Raph appeared at his side as he came to a stop perched on top of the last tree of the forest line.

Before they could get a good look around them, the Hunter bugs landed themselves on the same tree tipping it over.

The tree tipped over the side of the canyon and started sliding down it, Leonardo scrabbled to get on the other side of it before it squashed him, but tripped and landed on its trunk.

The mutant Hunter bugs raised its horns to slam down on him, he pushed himself onto his knees intending to raise his blades and block the blow, but slammed back down onto the tree as Raph leaped onto his shell and raised his sais to meet the downward striking horns.

If you've never tried to wrestle a giant horned animal with mutant strength while on top of a wiggling turtle strapped to a fast moving toboggan you probably can't understand just how difficult a balancing act this was.

The tree careened down the side of the canyon, slid across the bottom of it- running over several mutant Hunter bugs as it went by- and then crashed into a pool of sand.

The shock of the crash made the mutant Beetle and Raph lose hold of each other for a moment, it took advantage of this by slamming its horns down on his helmet- smashing the glass-Then ran into him, pushing him off the trunk into the sand-water.

"Raph!" Leonardo called, looking into the wiggling mass of flailing limbs thrashing about in the sand-water.

Leonardo reached over and grabbed the bug by its horns, and with great difficulty, managed to pull it out and flip it over into the side of the technodrome.

It went limp and fell back into the sand-water.

Leonardo set his visor firmly into his helmet to keep the sand from getting in and leaped into the pool, grabbing Raph by his underarms and dragging him back onto land.

"Are you okay?"

"Not... *Cough*... Really."

"Guys!" April called, skidding down the side of the canyon and coming towards them. "Are you guys okay?"

"No, Raph swallowed sand. Take him to the professor to get his lungs cleaned out."

"Not... Going to... wuss out... On you guys."

"It's not you Raph, it's this environment, it's poisoned to us." Leo said, he looked back at the technodrome with renewed determination, "One more reason to get Donnie back. He wasn't in his space suit when he left."

"Come on Raph, let me take you back to the ship." April leaned over to help him up.

"No...*Cough*I'll go on ahead, you help Leo get Don." Raph coughed a few times and then dragged himself to his feet.

"Where do you think he went?"

"Well we always joked back home that if he was ever lost in the middle of a desert Donnie would somehow find his way to the only electronics there, so if I had to guess-" Leonardo pointed to the open mouth of the technodrome.

(scene break)

Donatello led Vixen through the endless hallways of the technodrome, he didn't bother going through the "great Hall" of hallways because he knew that would likely just go to the control room. And he wasn't actually particularly interested in going there.

"Why do you keep poking through all of these old rooms? You look like you're looking for something specific." Vixen asked.

"I'm trying to find one of their labs... And I think I just found one!" Donny exclaimed in excitement.

He ran across the room to one of the large computers and started hitting it until it came online. Back in the business this is called "percussive maintenance."

"It works!" Donatello started to rifle through the computer files in excitement, "let's look at the footage of their last experiment."

A video footage came up with the Kraang shoving three aliens together and mutating them into a giant ball of ooze. Its assistant crossed the room to a spherical beaker filled with glowing amethyst goop, it collected a sample and walked over to the aliens, squirting it with the concoction.

The mutant ooze monster separated back and the three creatures reformed . The video timed out and the screen went black.

Donatello's mouth dropped open, and, barely daring to hope, he turned his head to look across the room.

There, his eyes landed on a smashed beaker, the top part of it had been smashed, but in the bottom he very clearly saw a dose of glowing amethyst ooze.

Donatello approached it with reverence, "An advanced retro mutagen formula,"

He grabbed Vixen by the shoulders, "Do you know what this means!?"

"What?"

"If I can analyze and re-create this then I can save Timothy."

"Who's Timothy?"

All of the enthusiasm drained out of him and he stared blankly into space "I don't know." He said blankly.

He found Something that looked a suitcase. it seemed to be made to hold vials. he took on of the empty vials and filled it with the contents of the beaker.

"Come on, lets go."

They walked back into the hallway, and noticed a bit of sunlight streaming into the hall.

"There must be a hole toward the side of the techno drone."

Above the core, there was indeed a giant hole toward the top of the techno drone that was allowing sand and water to pour in, all the way down into the dark shadowy bottom of the techno drome.

It looks like what they were standing on was once a bridge from one side of the room the other but the middle of it had corroded and fallen out.

"I wonder what's down there?" Donny asked, looking down into the shadowy depths.

"Donnie!" a woman's voice cried out.

He looked across the bridge to see April and Leo standing at the other end.

"April!" He called out brightly. "Oh! Leo! I'm glad you've finish your museum tour and decided to come join us, You won't believe what me and Vixen found in this ship."

"Museum?" April asked, "Does he think it's still yesterday?" She whispered to Leo.

Leo gripped the rails and leaned out as far as he could " Don? Donnie? Do you remember us?"

"What do you mean, do I remember you? Why wouldn't I?"

Leo narrowed his eyes. Puzzled by his brothers anger Donnie followed Leo's gaze to Vixen.

Vixen scoffed and moved forward to the front of the bridge to sneer at them.

"Well, look who finally showed up, guess Your brother couldn't be that important to you if the red one didn't even bother to show up.

"Vixen?" Donnie asked. She turned to face him and let her back paw skirt dangerously close to the edge.

Her foot slipped, she screamed as she fell into the hole.

"Vixen!" He exclaimed, he managed to grabbed her wrist before she fell out of reach.

Her feet scrabbled against the side of the ship, scraping against a control panel her foot flipped a switch.

the Technodrome hummed as it's circuits roared to life.

Light flooded the pit revealing a tangled mass of vines wrapped around the core.

Awoken by the hums and lights, mutant Hunter bugs and Root rots began to stir angrily.

"Don't make any sudden moves. " Donnie whispered. He placed his foot back to get some lift as he pulled her out.

The platform they were standing on gave a groan and fell out from beneath them.

They screamed as they sledded down into the withering mass of vines.

"The suitcase!" He screamed. The cure flew out of his hand and bounced across the withering mass, skidding across the edge and hooking it's handle on a spire reaching out over a sparking battery set in the center of the mass.

"No!" He yelled, making a break for the case.

"Donnie!" His team mates exclaimed. Leo leaped down after him. skirting past another control panel and accidentally activating it.

The gravity gave way as the ship was flooded with anti- gravitons.

The vines lifted into the air, obscuring the teens from each others vision.

Donnie felt himself lift off. He grabbed the vine in front of him and used it to climb downward.

Leo climbs downward, trying to catch sight of his brother through the vines. April tried to follow, a pair of thick vines wrapped themselves around her arms and yanked her upward.

She struggled valiantly, which became harder as more more vines wrapped around her. The tangled mast shifted slightly as something landed on and clung to it.

Vixen gave her a nasty grin as April struggled, She opened her mouth, parting her lower jaw and clamps down on April's head.

Memories flooded her brain as she sucked on the girl psychic energy.

 _"Talking to a monkey, getting a strange sense of knowing about it that no one else had. Hearing sounds in her head that no one can hear, not even her rat master."_

 _"Being strapped to a metal table as a pink brain explained to her that she was very unique. Being trained in a secret art that she learned in months instead of years, not understanding how such a feat was possible."_

Vixen understood how it was possible, she'd forgotten she was dealing with psychic.

April concentrated her thoughts and then exploded them outward from her, causing Vixen and the vines to fly off as they were battered away from her in a psychic blast.

Leo cut and slashed his way through the vines, A mutant Hunter bug flew through the air and landed on him, dragging him into a heated wrestling match.

He ended the match swiftly by cutting its leg off and kicking it away from him, if he had time to breathe he might feel bad about that, but right now the few minutes he spent wrestling that stupid insect could mean the end of Earth.

He spotted Donnie just as a hunter bug was closing in on his brother, using the mass of vines he was clinging to as a starting point, he pushed himself off it, slicing the hunter bug in two as he flew past.

"Donnie !" He called as he clung to the mass of vines rooted the floor. "We have to get out of here."

"Leo, that suitcase has a new retro mutagen formula in it, it could save Karai and Tim." Donnie explained.

"It could save Karai?" Leo asked. The room seemed to darken, Leo looked up through the vines and the hunter bugs and out of the hole in the ceiling, a cloud was passing over the sun, once it passed the autumn colors of dusk flooded into the room.

He closed his eyes as the sunlight filtered through the vines and landed on his face. He tried to mentally strangle the tear that was fighting to force its way out of his eyes as he opened them and looked at Donnie again.

"We don't have time, we need to go." He said solemnly.

"First you bug me for weeks on end to save Karai, and now that I have you want to leave it?" Donnie snapped.

Leo's thoughts came to a halt. Like two sets of gears that ran into each other and jammed.

The idealist in him said he should try for all three. Karai , Donnie, and the earth. That's what a hero would do.

The realist in him screamed that they had wasted enough time and retro-mutagen wouldn't save anyone if Donnie was lost and they failed the earth.

Donnie wrenched out of his grip and swam after the case.

"Donnie, wait!" Leo called, temporarily forgetting about gravity and reaching out a hand for him, his feet lifted off the vines once he let go , He scrabbled fruitlessly to regain his grip before floating away.

Vixen landed on another vine.

"Okay, you've got some serious psychic chops, but you don't know how to use them. "

"And you do? What makes you think I don't know how to use them." April fired back.

"Because your mind is way too scattered, I can catch images flickering from your brain even from here,- The worry- that having two guys pursuing you will hurt one of their feelings." She started to circle April.

"The resentment- of being forced to pick a life mate at 15. The confusion- about your feelings. I can help you that you know. Make him forget you. Then you won't have to choose. You can have the human and you won't have to hurt anyone's feelings."

She leaped onto the vine above April.

"He's a great guy, you know he deserves better than someone whose heart isn't in it."

"Stop rifling through my head! I'm not going to let you turn his brain inside out and claim you're doing me a favor!"

"A mind as scattered as yours can never win a battle like this." Vixen blew another psychic blast at April.

A new deluge of memory flooded April, her mind was assaulted with feelings of embarrassment from watching Donnie mess up another attempt to impress her, irritation at seeing Casey and Donnie competing for her, and the flood of something that she couldn't describe overwhelming her at the sight of Donnie presenting his music box so much that she fled.

Before she could recover from the last onslaught Vixen sent another psychic blast at her that threw her off her feet.

Vixen landed on a tree trunk sized branch and, spotting Donnie swimming after the suitcase, scrabbled up like a little squirrel, poking her head around and shooting another psychic blast at him.

It hit him full frontal, causing him to clutch his head and scream.

"Donnie!" Leo cried out.

Leo swam forward, plucking Donnie out of the air and placing him on his back to try to examine him.

Donnie rolled onto all fours and slid his second eyelids over his eyes.

He hissed, which, coming from a pet turtle wasn't scary, but, coming from a mutant turtle, sounded monstrous.

Leo leaned back in surprise, did Donnie Just go feral? He wasn't prepared to block when Donatello lunged forward, skull bashing him in the Shell.

Donnie lunged at the control panel, cutting off the gravity before rolling into a hallway.

Leo landed on the bridge before scrabbling after him, calling for him to come back.

April managed to use her telekinesis to save her from going splat, but it didn't save her from getting blasted by Vixen again.

"This is just getting pathetic. When are you going to give up?" Vixen taunted, landing gracefully on the floor and drawing herself up to her full height.

"Maybe you're half right. Maybe I am confused about my feelings. But that doesn't mean I have be scattered. Ever since aliens dragged me into this new world of mutants and invasions and ninjas, Donnie's been right there beside me helping me figure it all out. And I've been trying to help him in any way I can back. But for the longest time that was limited to buying groceries and helping him clean his lab."

She drew herself up for full height, "and now, now that I can do something to really help them. I'm not confused about that."

Vixen sent out a psychic blast at her, hitting her with an unfailing onslaught.

April walked forward through it. Not letting the onslaught slow her.

Vixen tried to turn up the power. but it didn't stop her.

April walked right up to her and placed her hands on the side of Vixens head, blasting forward a psychic blast of her own that knocked the other girl out.

(scene break)

"Donnie, Wait!" Leo called.

Donnie ignored him, bounding through the halls in an attempt to leave the strange voice behind.

Coming to an dead end- A giant hole in the wall and ceiling where an waterfall of sand poured into the pit below- Donnie pullout out his Bo and began spinning it.

Touching one end of his staff the the ground, he pole vaulted over the ditch and flew to the other side.

Leo skidded to a stop in front of the hole, It looked just slightly beyond what he could manage without a vault.

Donnie turned and glared at him. "How many times do I have to tell you to leave me alone." He spat.

Leo felt a cold sweat climb up his neck, It looks Like Vixen had reverted his brother back to his previous confused state.

"Donnie." He begged softly. "Please, come back, we don't have anymore time. Please. Don't force me to leave you here."

"Well you're out of luck. Because I'm not going anywhere."

Leo's brain started to shut down in panic. He needed to try something else. Anything else.

Mentally blanking he backed away from the edge. Then charged it. Leaping over he outstretched his arms to reach for the other side.

Donnie's expression changed from surprise to shock to fear as Leo sailed towards the edge, missed it, then kept going.

He hit the brick hard pool hard enough to smash his visor and sank, he gasped, inhaling viscous sand and convulsing. Flailing until his fingers brushed the side of a ladder he dragged himself out of the pool and leaned himself on a metal console poking out just above it.

He let out several hacks. a disgusting, wet, noise. And then crashed to the floor. Paralyzed by the sensation of his own soughing body.

He weakly lifted his head to look at Donnie.

Donnie was watching him with a scared expression that turned to disgust.

"Well, this certainly doesn't help your case. " The other turtle said disdainfully. "No one who had the fate of an entire world resting on their backs would jeopardize it doing something that reckless."

He turned and left.

Leo watched him leave then laid his head down on the console. "I'm sorry." He whispered. " I failed you."

He didn't think Donnie could hear him, so he was surprised by the rejoinder.

"I should think," Don said primly. " That failing a planet would a lot worse than failing one person."

Leo laid awake a few moment more, thinking on this, then, his strength leaving him, closed his eyes.

"It's the same to me." He said weakly.

Donnie watched the pit for a moment, turned away, then closed his eyes.

(scene break)

"Do you see anything?"

"No.. wait.. Yes, It's April!"

April ran into the control room puffing. " did Leo get back with Donnie?"

"No, Just Raph, then you."

"They must be on their way, wait a bit more."

"I'm afraid we can't, we've lost our remaining time already waiting for you. It's them or the earth." Fugitoid said.

"We can't just leave them." Mikey pleaded.

"We must, there isn't any more time." Fugitoid said, closing the hatch door and lifting the ship.

Mikey deflated and trudged over to the window to watch the planet go by as they started lift off.

He pressed his face and palms against the glass trying to get a better look out of it.

"Wait! there's someone out there! Land back down!"

The ship flew over the expanse towards the distant figure and landed next to it.

The teens ran out to see Donnie trudging towards them. A limp Leonardo on his back.

"DOOOONNNIIEE!" Mikey cried bounding forward to clinch his brother in a vise-like hug as Raph and Casey pulled Leo off him.

"I was so worried you were never coming back!"

April approached , smiling. "Does this mean you remember us now Don?"

He smiled weakly at her. "Not... quite. But... we'll see."

He felt a hand squeeze his weakly and turned to look at Leo.

Leo smiled. "Thank you. for taking a leap of faith on me."

Donnie returned the smile uneasily and let the other teens herd him into the ship, where the hatch close and the vessel lifted for take off.

Donnie looked around at the smile faces around him, then looked back out the window. Reveling in the Déjà vu of his first up-close look at the stars.

(end chapter)

Donnie didn't really have any first love type reaction to April in this fic. I think that's fair. I mean the first time he saw her she was sauntering through the street without a care in the world. And the second time he saw her she was using a darth vader force choke on what he thought was his family at the time. Terror beats out attraction I think.

I mean, you'd have to be pretty cold to jump from, this girl is killing my family HALP! to OMG! you're pretty, marry me.

That was the end. This turned out ok. Though not my best showing I think. Maybe that's cause I've read it a million times so it doesn't really seem fresh to me.

I'm part way through another fic that I think will turn out better. Here's the logline.

After receive a warning about a time anomaly from a time apprentice Donnie returns home to find that his family has never left the sewers and doesn't recognize him. Now he will have to fight alien ninjas, rally his human allies and outrun shredders henchmen in a race to unravel the mystery of the time scepter before it can be used to grant shredder ultimate power. The hardest part will be keeping his curious family out of harms way.

This fic may or may not involve a robot chicken, brain worms, a battle nexus homage, tiger claw, Karai beating an alien to death with a guitar, a very distressed Master Splinter, copious amounts of sobbing, and Raph piloting a tank.

One last note, this being-

Does anybody know how these words are supposed to be spelled?

Sais? Sai's? I read somewhere that the Japanese language doesn't recognize plurals. Does that mean that it's just Sai? Even if there are two of them? Do you need to capitalize them? Some one _please_ tell me how to spell these Japanese weapon words.(I will love you forever, thank you.)


End file.
